tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Dec 18 14:18:38 1995

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Re: KLBC: Win 95 "Klingon-ized"

~mark says:

>Date: Sat, 16 Dec 1995 11:26:21 -0800
>From: [email protected]

>>In a message dated 95-12-15 08:12:21 EST, you write:
>
>>>Okay, this blows my complaint out of the water.  The sentence
>>>{Qo'noSDaq qagh Sop SuvwI' Hoch} indeed is ambiguous; both of
>>>the interpretations are grammatical.  "All warriors eat worms
>>>on Kronos" and "On Kronos, all warriors eat worms" both work.
>>>
>>>-- ghunchu'wI'               batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj

If the ambiguity you are concerned about centers around whether the action 
occurs on Qo'noS or whether the worms are on Qo'noS, I don't see this as 
ambiguous at all. Locatives apply to verbs only. There is no justification 
whatsoever for interpreting a locative to refer to a noun. Please point out 
some canon or rule I'm missing if I'm wrong on this. This sentence as given 
only means that on Qo'noS the action occurs that all warriors eat worms. 
There is only one verb and the locative describes where it happened.

If instead you mean that all soldiers only eat worms on Qo'noS, then you 
have to say:

Qo'noSDaq bIHbogh qaghmey neH Sop SuvwI'pu' Hoch.

All warriors eat only worms which are on Qo'noS.

>>I reiterate that have available the Noun Suffix Type 5 {-'e'}, 
"topicalizer"
>>to specify Objects as well as Subjects.  If we must specify that the 
worms
>>are what are on Kronos, try {Qo'noSDaq qagh'e' Sop SuvwI' Hoch}.
>
>I have no clue why the topicalizer should work as you claim it to.

That makes two of us. The poster is trying to make a locative modify a noun 
by topicalizing the noun. This simply doesn't work. The only disambiguating 
function of {-'e'} we've seen so far has been Krankor's use of it to point 
out the head noun of a relative clause when the verbbogh has both a subject 
and an object. Okrand thought about it and agreed that this was good and 
now it is canon. Other than that, {-'e'} may add some emphasis to a noun, 
but it doesn't disambiguate ANYTHING, so folks out there looking for a tool 
to help point out which noun you mean to modify by something can cool your 
jets. It won't work.

>You
>have topicalized the "qagh", so it could well mean:
>
>"As for the qagh, all the warriors eat it/them on Qo'noS."
>with no change in the ambiguity.  I have seen no evidence that using 
"-'e'"
>somehow magically contracts the scope of a preceding "-Daq".  -'e' is a
>focus marker (I know it's called a topic marker, but Okrand has told us he
>meant it was a focus marker).  It's not a scope-reducer, so far as we 
know.
>
>~mark

qaQochbe'
charghwI'

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