tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 27 08:25:01 1995
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Re: All of us.
>Date: Thu, 23 Nov 1995 21:50:46 -0800
>From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
>taghqIj writes:
>>'Each of us translated the sentence differently'.
>>(there were three of 'us'). Now what I got was <jaS mu'tlhegh wImughta' maH
>>Hoch>. What do the grammarians think of that?
>I'm not a grammarian (and I don't play one on TV), but I'll respond.
>I think you've got a good translation of the English sentence, with
>the exception of the word "each." That's a tough one. You might be
>able to be more specific here, saying something like {...wImughta'
>jIH cha' latlh je}. You also might talk about {mu'tlhegh rap} to try
>to emphasize that the three of you got different translations for the
>same sentence. Or you might give up on trying to say it as one phrase:
>{mu'tlhegh vImugh. jaS mugh latlh 'ej jaS mugh latlh cha' je.}
Yes, "each" is a toughie. But I think the use of "Hoch" covers it in
context here. "We all translated it differently" might mean we
collectively translated it differently from someone else, but the context
makes it clear that we must be talking about differently from each other.
Or you could try "wImughpu'DI', pIm[chuq] mu'tlheghmaj" (when we'd
translated it, our sentences were different [from each other]). The -chuq
in brackets is there because we don't know if pIm is intransitive (and thus
would take no -chuq) or transitive (in which case it would need it).
>>I considered dropping the
>><Hoch>, but then it sounded a little (to me) like 'There was already a
>>translation, but ours was different'.
>I agree with you. That's how I'd tend to read it too.
Except for the fact that if you use "Hoch" as a noun in a noun-noun
construction to mean "all of" (as I do, and as we now have some canon
support from Okrand for), you STILL can't say "*maH Hoch". Pronouns do not
form possessives in N-N constructions. They use suffixes. "All of us"
would thus be "Hochma'" (arguably Hochmaj; decide for yourself).
~mark