tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Feb 24 13:40:48 1997

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Re: Need some clearification.



I complained:
> :but! {mangghom} isn't a location someone is at or approaching, right?
> :so shouldn't it be more like {qoH Da mangghomvam negh law' 'e' vItu'}?
> :"I find that many of this army's soldiers behave like fools."
> :
> :HomDoq
> 
and Voragh replied:
> But...
> 
> (TKD p. 27f)
> 
> Although Okrand's example is pa' "room", if you really believe that -Daq can
> *only* be used on locations that are the destinations of verbs of motion,
> how then would you say something like:
> 
no... I believe(d so far), {-Daq} can only be used to produce locative
noun phrases, the restriction does not so much apply to the main verb
but to the noun phrase: an army is not a "real" thing in the sense that
it denotes a concept rather than a thing.

>      "There are some very confusing sentences in Okrand's new book ."
that is indeed the most tricky of your examples (if you follow my strict
interpretation of TKD p.27f); I guess you might get away with using -Daq,
referring to some place on the paper or some memory cell that contain
the referenced information... or without -Daq, using tu'lu' and ngaS
(which is of course equally dubious)

> or
>      "I held a knife in my hand."
actually, you use your hand to hold the knife, or in most cases,
you simply hold the knife; if I read {ghopwIjDaq 'oH taj'e'} or s.th.
similar, I picture the knife being thrust through the hand

> or
>      "There is a traitor aboard this ship."
> 
"ship" is a perfectly fine noun for a location.

> Finally, look at its figurative use in:
> 
>      wa' Dol nIvDaq matay'DI' maQap 
>      We succeed together in a greater whole. TKW 
> 
a) I don't quite understand the Klingon here, what exactly is a
"superior entity", can you give me some more canon on the usage of
{Dol} and/or some other English expressions you consider synonymous
with how "entity" should be understood?

b) I guess Okrand just got lazy here or had to backfit something...
reading this makes me wonder why he didn't use {-Daq} for "in" in
temporal expressions, as e.g. "in one night"; my guess is, at the
time he came up with that, the localness of {-Daq} was more present
in his mind (btw: the words "expression" and "mind" don't qualify
for taking {-Daq}, in my mind :)

> Don't make things more complicated for yourself than they are!
> 
but how am I to know, when I am simplifying _legally_, vs. _illegally_?
without having easy access to all canon examples, I have to rely on
what's written in TKD (and HolQeD)

other uses of {-Daq} from TKW I don't quite like:

tIqDaq (p.23), which would imply that "mind" is a legal location as well;
would you accept s.th. like {tIqvo' ghoS HoSna'}?

may'Daq (p.38) (and may'meyDajvo'; p. 91) where it wouldn't be too
difficult to use "battlefield" instead...

HomDoq



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