tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 07 18:48:11 1997
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Re: Apposition
>Date: Sun, 6 Jul 1997 15:27:30 -0700 (PDT)
>From: "Neal Schermerhorn" <[email protected]>
>
>ghItlh peHruS:
>
>>> mogh puqloD 'oHbogh wo'rIv'e' jIH
>>> I am Worf, Mogh's son.
>>
>>I'd write mogh puqloD wo'rIv jIH
>
>That would seem to read "I am Worf of the son of Mogh." The whole thing I'm
>going for is avoiding the N-N apposition which looks just like possession. If
>I say
>
>verengan jagh parwI' ghaH
>
>it means "He is the hater of the enemy of the Ferengi." It cannot mean "He is
>the enemy of the Ferengi, the hater," or "He is the Ferengi, the hater of the
>enemy." These would need to be, in turn;
>
>verengan jagh ghaHbogh parwI''e' ghaH
>verengan ghaHbogh jagh parwI''e' ghaH
>
>This, as charghwI' pointed out, is not true apposition, but I believe it is as
>close as we can come.
Er, there IS canon support for apposition, just as peHruS suggests. And
I've used the pronoun-bogh construction myself, waaay back when in some
Jonah translations, and didn't much like it then either. Yes, there's
potential for apposition to be confused for N-N construction. That's how
it is. 'oy' yISIQ. Punctuation can help clear that up, but not always
(e.g. in speech). We simply activate the subspace Cope-O-Tron and deal.
Hebrew has apposition and N-N constructions rather similar to Klingon's (in
the other direction). It can happen.
~mark