tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Dec 17 07:48:59 1995

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Re: KLBC: Win 95 "Klingon-ized"

yoDtargh had written:
>To use your phrasing, I'd say "*DaqDaq SoHtaHbogh
> vISovbe'", with the asterisk because I'm trying to make the -Daq-tagged
> word the head-noun of the relative clause, which I believe is not legal.

peHruS writes:
>{Daq} alone means "site, location" (n).  The Type 5 Noun Suffix construction
>appears to be somewhat like the Noun-Noun construction, i.e., {DujDaq} means
>"the site of the ship," thus, "on the ship."

No.  I will agree that {-Daq} and {Daq} are related, but your equating the
use of a noun suffix with the creation of a compound noun goes too far.  I
will agree that {Duj Daq} WITH THE SPACE does mean "the site of the ship,"
but that does not mean "on the ship."  {DujDaq} WITHOUT THE SPACE could be
a compound noun meaning something like "ship-site," but I'd usually notice
the {-Daq} at the end and translate it as "in/to/on/at the ship," applying
to the sentence in which it is found.  Note that this might end up meaning
"aboard the ship," "toward the ship," "inside the ship," "at the ship," or
some other prepositional phrase, based on context.  Try {DujDaq jIghoS} or
{DujDaq jIleng} or {DujDaq jISo'} or {DujDaq nagh vIbaH}.  Do any of these
make sense using the translation "the ship's location"?  No, they all need
the prepositional meaning of the noun suffix {-Daq}.

>I do not feel comfortable with
>saying "the location of the site," even though many of the engineers for whom
>I write do just that.  I submit a rephrashing of your sentence above to:
> {SoHtaHbogh Daqvetlh vISovbe'}.

But {DaqDaq} DOESN'T mean "the location of the site" at all!  It means
"at the site," "to the site," "in the site," etc.  The noun suffix {-Daq}
does NOT mean "location."

>Also, I apologize for my ignorance regarding MO's retraction of TKD p172's
>{jIHtaHbogh naDev vISovbe'}, which I then used to make the paraphrase
>{SoHtaHbogh pa' vISovbe'}.

"Retraction" is too strong a word.  So far as I know, he never actually came
out and said that it's wrong.  He just gave a different, simpler (better?)
way to say it in the audiotape.  At this time, we can't really dismiss the
translations given in the Appendix.  However, if we can't figure out how the
grammar as we know it was used to translate an example, we don't have a good
basis for using it as a template for new phrases.

-- ghunchu'wI'               batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj

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