tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Sep 08 01:28:59 1994
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Re: KLBC: Blood of the vanquished
According to R.B Franklin:
>
> On Wed, 7 Sep 1994, Nick NICHOLAS wrote:
>
> > Hu'tegh! nuq ja' R.B Franklin jay'?
>
> Would I translate that as, "Dammit! What the hell did R.B. Franklin say?"
> {{:-)
That has a history. Nick once posted something like, {batlh
jatlhneS R.B. Franklin quv:} and I commented on how that seemed to
be laying it on a little thick with the "honor" stuff. His
response was to jump to the opposite extreme. This is according
to my feeble recollection, of course...
> > You can. But if you want to say "the bile that was defeated by the enemy?"
> > (The convention launched by Krankor is to topicalise the relative clause head
...
> I'm not familiar with that convention, but if {-'e'} is used to identify
> the subject of a relative clause, I think that would be a great idea.
You lost it on the curve. The {-'e'} is not used to indicated
the SUBJECT of a relative clause. It is used to identify the
HEAD NOUN of a relative clause. What's the difference?
Well, if I say, [nagh vIwoDpu'bogh Datu'ta'}, then the
translation is, "You found the rock which I had thrown away."
The SUBJECT of the relative clause is "I". The HEAD NOUN of the
relative clause is "rock". The function of the relative clause
is to describe the rock, which is the object of the main verb
"find". But what if Holtej threw away the rock?
{nagh woDpu'bogh Holtej Datu'ta'.} That could either mean that
you found Holtej, who threw the rock, or that you found the
rock, which Holtej threw. We don't know which is the head noun
of the relative clause.
Krankor's case was that the rock is the topic of the relative
clause, so it should get the {-'e'} suffix, and in a
conversation, Okrand agreed. Now, we can disambiguate the
sentence as {nagh'e' woDpu'bogh Holtej Datu'ta'.} Now, it is
clear that you found the rock which Holtej had thrown away.
[How you doin' there, Holtej?]
> Although the sentence is ambiguous in English (you can't tell whether the
> guard or the brother was defeated) I think the following phrases are
> clear in Klingon:
>
> 'avwI' jeybogh qama' loDnI'
> The prisoner's brother, who defeated the guard subject: loDnI'
This could have several other meanings. There are THREE
potential head nouns for this relative clause. This is because
a noun-noun construction behaves like a single noun and a
relative clause ALSO behaves like a single noun. So, do we
consider the noun-noun construction to be part of the relative
clause, or do we consider the relative clause to be part of the
noun-noun construction? Eventually, we compress down to one
noun described by the rest of this stuff. Which one? Without
{'e'} we have no idea.
Using {'e'} can make your meaning clear. Consider the three
options:
'avwI''e' jeybogh qama' loDnI'
"The guard, who is defeated by the prisoner's brother", or "the
brother of the guard who was defeated by the prisoner". No, I
can't tell which this means. It is ambiguous.
'avwI' jeybogh qama''e' loDnI' "The brother of the prisoner,
who defeated the guard". Note that in Klingon, it is clear
that it is the prisoner and not the brother who defeated.
'avwI' jeybogh qama' loDnI''e'
"The prisoner's brother, who defeated the guard".
> 'avwI' loDnI' jeybogh qama'
> The prisoner who defeated the guard's brother subject: qama'
or "The guard's brother who was defeated by the prisoner", or
"The guard's prisoner, who defeated the brother". See?
> qama' jeybogh 'avwI' loDnI'
> The guard's brother, who defeated the prisoner subject: loDnI'
or "The prisoner, who was defeated by the guard's brother" or
"The brother of the guard who defeated the prisoner"
I'll delete the rest...
> In other word's, the suffix {-'e'} isn't required to determine who
> defeats who. It's all determined by the word order.
We may know who defeats whom in most (but not all cases), but
we don't know which noun is being described by all the stuff
around it. This is the most important thing in the clause.
By the way, I'm having a heavy case of deja vu here...
> wa'Hu' reghuluSDaq bIghHa' Hopvo' Duj QIHlu'pu'bogh nIHta' 'avwI' jeybogh
> qama' loDni''e'.
> Yesterday, the prisoner's brother, who defeated the guard, stole a
> damaged ship from a remote prison on Regulus.
While this is true, it is the {-'e'} which pointed out that you
are talking about the brother and not the guard or the
prisoner. Word order didn't really help all that much.
> yoDtargh
charghwI'