tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Sep 22 16:47:09 1994

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Hoch, et al.




Somebody writes (sorry; my stupid mail program went wild on me and
I lost the header):

>>> Hoch yuQmeyvam boghaj 'ach *Europa*

>> We have come to the concensus on this list (I believe) that
>> this is better stated as {yuQmeyvam Hoch},

> That concensus is supported by canon.  See the insult in PK:
> "targhlIj yab tIn law' no'lIj Hoch yabDu' tIn puS" for "Your
> targh has a bigger brain than all your ancestors put together."

I'm suspicious of this concensus.  I've seen it both ways,
{Hoch} + N and N + {Hoch}, with the former a little more common.
The canonical example unfortunately is not conclusive: it could
just as easily be parsed {nolIj (Hoch yabDu')}, "all the brains
of your ancestors" or {(no'lIj Hoch) yabDu'}, "the brains of all
your ancestors".  True, {Hoch yuQmey}, "the planets of
everything", is an odd construction, but so is {yuQmey Hoch},
"everything of the planets".

I bring this up because of an issue raised in another posting,
where charghwI' writes:

> I don't see the void of a word for "inside" to be quite as
> linguistically challenging as the void for the adjective or
> question word "which", as in "Which one of the shiny helmets
> should I choose?"

The tape CK contains the phrase {nuq mI'lIj, tera'ngan}. It's
translated on the tape as "What is your number, Terran?", but
this can't be right.

Captain Krankor, et al., have shown that {nuq} and {'Iv} are
pronouns, in which case, I'd expect "What is your number?" to
be rendered {mI'lIj nuq} or {mi'lIj 'oH nuq'e'}.  The conclusion
is that {nuq mI'lIj} is a noun-noun phrase.

Moreover, as I noted in my letter in HolQeD 3:1, the N-N phrase,
in addition to showing possession, is the regular way of rendering
nouns as adjectivals (while not stated explicitly in TKD, this usage
is followed by many writers, including Okrand himself).

So the phrase {nuq mI'lIj} is not only a N-N phrase, but an
*adjectival* N-N phrase.  In other words, {nuq mI'lIj} = "Which
number (is) yours/which (is) your number?"  This is made even clearer
by substituting the other interrogative pronoun: {'Iv paq Daghaj}
= "Whose (lit. who's) book do you have?"

The internal logic of the N-N construction seems to be that *any* noun
that modifies another noun precedes the noun it modifies.  This applies
to possession, description, even, I would submit, proper names and
numbers.  Consider the parallels:

reghuluS taj  "of the set of daggers, the one from Reghulus"
tlha taj "of the set of daggers, the one belonging to Klaa"
nagh taj "of the set of daggers, the one made of stone"
wej taj "of the set of daggers, a group of three"
Hoch taj "of the set of daggers, all of them"

with names:

tlha Hod "of the set of captains, the one named Klaa"
logh Hop Hut tengchaH "of the set of space stations, the one
                       named Deep Space Nine"

Since the words {Hoch, latlh, nuq, 'Iv, vay'} are listed in TKD
as nouns, if we want to use them to modify another noun, (as
"all, another, which, whose, any"), it seems to me that we must 
place them *before* the modified noun.

>charghwI'

-- Terry


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