tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jan 21 17:04:43 1996

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Re: Hughwij vIpe'pa' vISov jIpoQ

David Wood writes:
>     How do I learn more about the "ship-in-which-I-fled" problem without
>choking the mailing list with backchat?

Don't worry about the traffic.  Ask your questions!  Others will see the
answers and learn at the same time.

>More specifically, what's been tried and why didn't they work?

The problem is that English can use almost any part of a relative clause
as the subject or object of the main clause of a sentence, but Klingon
has tools to mark only the subject or object of the relative clause as
the topic.  This causes problems when trying to translate something from
English if the original uses something else as the topic.

To use a sentence as a relative clause, we add {-bogh} to the verb.  To
mark the subject of the relative clause, we add {-'e'} to the subject.
To mark the object, we add {-'e'} to the object.

Let's use {DujDaq megh Sop HoD} "The captain eats lunch in the ship" as an
example.  We can use either "captain" or "lunch" in a relative clause for
the object of another sentence, for instance "I see [it]."  We have tools
to say either {DujDaq megh Sopbogh HoD'e' vIlegh} "I see the captain who
eats lunch in the ship" or {DujDaq megh'e' Sopbogh HoD vIlegh} "I see the
lunch which the captain eats in the ship."  We don't have a way to say "I
see the ship in which the captain eats lunch."  We can't use {-'e'} to mark
the locative, because both {-'e'} and {-Daq} are type 5 suffixes and cannot
be used at the same time.  We don't have any other tools to use.  The only
good way to get across the meaning is to break it into two sentences:
{DujDaq megh Sop HoD.  Dujvetlh vIlegh} "The captain eats lunch in the ship.
I see that ship."

The discussion years ago on this subject used the example of referring to
a ship on which someone escaped, so this has become known as the "ship-in-
which-I-fled" problem.

>...For that matter, is there a FAQ-like thing anywhere which contains ALL the
>known new features and bugs of Klingon? Things like new Klingon constructions,
>old English constructions that can't be made to fit, &c.

Not so far as I know.  The only truly "new" construction that I'm aware of
is the use of {-'e'} to mark the "head noun" of a relative clause.  Some of
Okrand's sentences give us hints about apposition and partitive usage, but
we haven't yet worked out the details.  There are so many non-fitting English
constructions (intentionally!) that a list of them wouldn't be very useful.
The best source for post-TKD-revealed information is HolQeD, the Journal of
the Klingon Language Institute.  If you want to know everything there is to
know about the language, you really need to get a complete set of back issues.

Oh, one more thing -- the subject line is missing an {'e'}.  It needs to be
{HughwIj vIpe'pa' vISov 'e' vIpoQ}.  Or simply {HughwIj vIpe'pa' vISovnIS}.

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

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