tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 08 10:14:10 1996
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Re: usage of Hoch and latlh
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>Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1996 21:30:44 -0700
>From: "Kenneth Traft" <[email protected]>
OK, there's been a lot of discussion on the perennial {Hoch} problem, so I
might as well put in how I saw/see it.
>I have discussed this with Glen Proechel. Why did they believe it should
>follow the noun? Hoch is a noun and should follow the rules of noun - noun
>constructions. Numbers are numbers and used like nouns. I would like to
>share his explanation with you all:
>Ken for Glen!
>A) Stative Verbs: When stative verbs FOLLOW the noun to which they refer,
>they resemble English adjectives and can take type 5 noun suffixes. This
>leads to the confusion that like Spanish the adjective follows the noun. As
>Worf says, "THIS IS NOT ITALIAN."
With you here. *Resemble*, not *are*. They're verbs used as adjectives,
and there seems to be a tendency to do this only with stative verbs
(i.e. there seems to be a distinction between stative and active verbs in
Klingon, and only the former can be used like this, following nouns). So
we have "qetbogh loD" and not "?loD qet", which should in theory be okay if
any verb could be used adjectivally.
>B) Noun-Noun Constructions: Many concepts which are classified as adjectives
>in English are expressed by noun-noun constructions. In Klingon the modifying
>noun PRECEDES the primry noun. It does not follow it. It is only when the
>noun-noun relationship describes POSSESSION that the thing possessed follows
>it.
>This brings up the caveat -- POSSESSION must not be confused with PARTITIVE.
>Partitive nouns, which show a "part of a whole" relationship (few, any, all)
>come before the noun they modify: <<Hoch tlhIngan>> -- All Klingons (also All
>of the Klingons). Hoch is an NOUN and would follow the noun-noun
>construction. In the case of some Klingons <<tlhIngan puS>> or several
>Klingons <<tlhIngan Sar>>, the modifiers FOLLOW the noun. Not because they
>are adjectives, but because they are Stative Verbs.
Now, this is the area of debate. The exact semantics of noun-noun
constructions have been discussed and debated quite a bit, with a lot of
difference of opinion and probably very little certainty (I certainly am
uncertain). Some really try to be very strict about making it
possession-only, some broaden it to be more general relationships, and some
go all the way to partitive, and so on.
It's pretty clear it's more than simple possession, since we have "peQ
chem" for "magnetic field" literally "magnetism's field", and one wouldn't
really say that magnetism possesses the field.
There's a lot of spectrum in how broad to make N-N semantics; I tend to
make it quite broad... probably too broad. I know of no canon offhand that
supports using it as a partitive, and Glen isn't the only person I've heard
object to it. I have been known to use it, but I doubt anyone's truly sure
aside from Okrand. I sometimes can see "*tlhIngan Hoch" for "all Klingons"
as reasonable (note the star though, since now we know better; see below),
not so much as a true partitive, but as "the everything the pertains to
Klingons: Klingons' all," which idiomatically would mean "all Klingons."
Same for "latlh", "bID", etc.
Now, I said there was no canon that I knew of for using N-N as a
partitive. There is also no canon I know of that implies that partitives
precede the noun, in general. Glen's statement of that as fact surprises
me; I was not aware that Okrand ever treated partitives in general
anywhere. Where does Glen get this fact? Always be careful when stating
opinions, since it's very easy to believe something so firmly you forget it
was you who thought it up. I am almost surely guilty of this myself, as
someone will likely point out.
Hmm... Maybe from the way numbers work? Since they precede, and seem to do
partitive action. But numbers are unusual partitives; more quantifiers
than showing some of a whole. And they are listed in the dictionary as
numbers, chuvmey, while Hoch is only listed as a noun, giving no indication
that it might have special grammar which the numbers likely do.
>Much has been made over Okrand's use of <<HochHom>> in the phrase "most of the
>23rd century." First, one must note that Hoch and HochHom are two separate
>words. HochHom is a very clever construction and literally means
>"near-entirety". He chose to translate this phrase as a POSSESSIVE NOT a
>partitive. Thus the phrase would read, "The 23rd century's near-entirety".
>Partitives DO NOT and CANNOT follow the nouns they modify.
I don't know where you have support for the last sentence, but I wonder, if
you accept "HochHom" following the noun as "the noun's near-entirety", why
wouldn't you accept "*tlhIngan Hoch" as "the Klingons' near-entirety",
taking tlhIngan as a plural (or collective, whichever feels better to you)
and thus meaning the entirety of all those that are Klingons? It was this
very reasoning which you follow right here that led me to propose/support
"tlhIngan Hoch" (and not presuming on partitives), since I did not have
access to wherever it is you found that partitives must precede.
>For example, Mark Shoulson recommended that one say, "tlhIngan bID jIH" for "I
>am half-Klingon." The problem with this is that it would REALLY say, "I am a
>Klingon's one half." If you are trying to use noun-noun constructions to show
>possession, a reality check is, "what happens if you put an imaginary
>"apostrophe - s" ('s) between two nouns (As I did with Mark's translation).
>"Half-Klingon" does not show possession. Further one-half is not an
>adjective, because there are no adjectives in Klingon. The correct
>translation would be, "bID tlhIngan jIH."
I can still see justification for "A Klingon's one-half", the same logic I
used when proposed: Consider a whole Klingon. If you cut that body in
half, that half is a half-Klingon: a half belonging to a Klingon. Ewww,
messy. Still, it's a good point that half a Klingon body is quite a way
from a whole person whose ancestry is half-Klingon. One could argue that
half his body was Klingon, but it was never half of an entire Klingon.
Now, to cap things all off, we have more data from Okrand, which clears
some things up, but not everything, since I'm not sure how or if it
generalizes. In TKW, we see the Hoch-before/Hoch-after debate is finally
settled, in Glen's favor: Hoch comes before. We also have an interesting
little connotational distinction regarding plurals and collectives with
Hoch, which Okrand told us separately, and you'll find in the latest issue
of HolQeD (it'll find its way onto the list soon, as HolQeD gets out.
Learning these things first is one of the advantages of subscription). So
now, *for the first time*, we have evidence that Hoch's grammar is unusual
and follows numerals in some way. Does that mean all partitives are like
that? Do I say "?HIvje' bIQ" for a glass of water? I'm not convinced
yet. Is "?bIQ HIvje'" ok? It refers to glass pertaining to water... could
be a water-glass regardless of whether or not there's water in it. (Note
bIQ bal(?) in the CD-ROM for "water jug). I'm not sure about partitives in
general here.
Up to TKW, evidence had been ambiguous. The only partitive uses of Hoch
(that I can think of) were "targhlIj yab tIn law', no'lI' Hoch yabDu' tIn
puS" and the HochHom example, which came later. The insult phrase cleverly
puts Hoch between two nouns, so you can interpret it either way... and we
did, with Glen following his opinion (later shown to be correct) and me
following mine. Even Okrand's inflection in speaking it didn't help.
HochHom seemed to be the first clear example, and it seems to favor putting
it after. As mentioned above, I still don't see how it doesn't favor
it... which of course makes for confusion, since we now KNOW that it comes
before.
Whew. That make sense?
~mark
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