tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 15 06:50:47 1996
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: noun + noun : `of the' or `which equals'?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 13:12:54 -0700
>From: "A.Appleyard" <[email protected]>
>"Mark J. Reed" <[email protected]> wrote (Subject: Re: William Martin,
>petaQ SoH);-
>> ... If you want to say "Captain of the battle cruiser taj", then try
>> {may'Duj "taj" HoD}. Also, your title should technically be {jubwI' HoD},
>> not {HoD jubwI'} (although some have chosen to ignore that little rule,
>> notably Captain Krankor (HoD Qanqor)).
>This sounds like more aggro resulting from not having a separate construction
>to say "the X which is a Y" where X and Y are both nouns. {Duj X} could also
>mean "the spaceship's X"; {X Duj} could also mean "the X's spaceship" -
>whichever is used to mean "the spaceship named X" or "the spaceship which is
>an X". Is {X ghaHbogh Y} correct for "the Y which is an X"?
This is the long-debated problem of nouns in apposition. ghaHbogh is okay
(though note that sometimes it's ghaHbogh, sometimes 'oHbogh, sometimes
chaHbogh, sometimes bIHbogh...), though we've seen it's not completely
necessary. There's a Skybox card in which "...from the home world of
Kronos" (clearly an appositional use) is translated "juHqo' Qo'noSvo'".
>batlh Hegh yoHbogh; 'ach yIn veS nejbe'bogh 'ej Qulbogh loDpu' Sep, 'ej vaj
>puSpa' qu'ghach boghmoHviS boghpu'bogh. (The brave die with honour [in
>battle]; but those who do not seek war live and breed men who resemble them [=
>like breeds like], and thus [the amount of] fierceness becomes less while
>those who have been born give birth [= as generations pass].) I.e. a society
>like the Klingons is likely to get less aggressive and more orderly as many
>generations pass.
I am disinclined to accept "yoHbogh" for "the brave"; that's what "yoHwI'"
is. Generally, I don't like -bogh phrases where the head-noun is not
stated. If it's important enough to be the head-noun, it's important
enough to put in the sentence explicitly, even as just a pronoun.
Similarly, "veS nejbe'bogh" can mean nothing to me other than "the battle
which he/she/it does not seek." "Those who do not seek battle" has to be
"veS lunejbe'bogh ghot" or something like that; possibly with "chaH" for
"ghot", but I think I'd prefer a noun ("veS nejbe'wI'" might also be okay,
though I recall there is/was a big debate as to whether or not this is
meaningful as -wI' attached to a sentence or as a noun-noun construction).
Also note the highly marked "qu'ghach": -ghach doesn't go on bare verbs in
non-poetic/marked speech.
~mark
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.4, an Emacs/PGP interface
iQB1AwUBMepMmsppGeTJXWZ9AQHt4AL+I266sqVXpyggzi/kzqFtrTNeUConTfKt
nwQjPIHyOEfUHUg3WY+Iy9AKXFZjyevqVq/R69Hhaq897/pTZ0E/TQ6hD3D09C/t
N1kgwbpcpPuatZbpQ6HXYQ8b/HzzBlv8
=kzGF
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----