tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Aug 25 20:58:38 1997

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Re: A nIb gem

ghItlh peHruS:

>loD jen law' be' jen nIb (my own invention)
>
>This means to me "The man is the same height (amount of jen = tall) as the
>woman."
>Obviously, {nIb} is not the antonym of {law'}.
>
>Furthermore, KGT 127-133 supplies plenty of examples of similes. The
general
>pattern is jen loD; rur Sor.
>
>Still, I couldn't erase from my mind the gem made possible by putting
{nIb}
>in the second position of law'/puS constructions.
>
>Comments, please.

This reminds me of when I jokingly said "jIjatlhtaHvIS, tlhIngan Hol Qatlh
law' DIvI' Hol Qatlh law' je!" - but in context, that was obviously meant
to sound odd. If we compare things in the law'/puS structure and don't use
law'/puS, it is at best extremely marked and at worst "the resulting
phrases literally make no sense at all" (KGT p. 178).

But now that I see where you are going - What you're comparing is height.
We don't have a verb "have a height of" or a noun "height" but we do have
'uj. Perhaps this -

nIb loD 'uj be' 'uj je = The man's 'ul and the woman's 'ul are identical.

Now, no one knows yet how to specify height, but this seems clear to me,
anyway. (In Spanish, this is close to how age is expressed - Cuantos a~nos
tiene Ud.? How many years do you have?) And it has the added bonus of not
violating proper grammar. Whether 'ul can be used in this matter is another
story, but what other choice is there? Besides the all-purpose copout -

nIb loD *height* be' *height* je

peHruS - or should it be ngongwI'? - I would use your example only in
circumstances where I mean to be conspicuous and my poor grammar would be
tolerated. You know as well as I that this is not that place! :)

Qermaq

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