tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Nov 25 17:38:18 1995

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Re: "soup"



peHruS writes:
>This gives {bIQDaq vutta'bogh targh}, not a complete sentence, but a
>grammatically correct phrase.

Grammatically correct, yes.  Conceptually correct?  Not quite.  This
word order puts the targ as the SUBJECT here, and I do not think you
really mean to referr to a (rather talented) targ which accomplishes
cooking.  If you want the targ to be cooked, then {targh} must be the
OBJECT of the verb {vut}.

I usually think of "soup" as being primarily the broth, and other things
in it (vegetables, bones, targ chunks) are incidental to its "soupness."
The American Heritage Dictionary gives the following definition:
>soup /suwp/ n.
>1. A liquid food prepared from meat, fish, or vegetable stock combined
>   with various other ingredients and often containing solid pieces.
I don't consider a targ which has been cooked in water to be "targ soup."
(I'd call that a "stewed targ.")  I'd have to say that "targ soup" is the
water in which a targ has been boiled, and that gets into a part of the
language that's been debated for years.  It's the old "ship in which I
fled" problem -- there's no way to make a locative the head noun of a
relative clause.

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




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