tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Nov 18 20:39:44 1997
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Numerically speaking
|ghItlh Qov:
|> }bIghHa' ghoS wej.
|> }The three go to the prison.
|>
|> Someone might argue that you can't use a number this way. The only
|> use of a number as a noun that I know we have is {wa' yIHoH} for
|> "Kill one of them."
Those who make that argument are wrong. Okrand explicitly states that,
"Numbers are used as nouns. As such, they may stand alone as subjects or
objects or they may modify another noun." (TKD p.54)
He then gives two examples -- one with a number acting as a stand alone
subject, the other as a stand alone object:
mulegh cha' Two (of them) see me.
wa' yIHoH Kill one (of them)!
BTW, there's another example of a number as a stand alone subject in CK:
maDo'chugh QeHchoH wa' If we're lucky, one will get angry.
He goes on to say in TKD: "Numbers used as modifiers precede the noun they
modify." E.g.
loS puqpu' (or) loS puq four children
vaghmaH yuQmey (or) vaghmaH yuQ fifty planets
and from CK:
cha' DIvI' beq two Federation crewmen
wej tlhInganpu' yoH three brave Klingons
In other words just like any other noun-noun phrase, such as tlhIngan
SuvwI', romuluS HIq, ghogh HablI', Du' naH, etc.
Numbers are simply a subset of nouns and, as such, behave like other nouns.
Being numbers, however, they can do a few *more* things that other nouns
cannot, which Okrand explains on TKD p.54f. They can be used for numbering
(DuS wa'), they can form ordinal numbers with -DIch (meb cha'DIch), and
they can form adverbials with -logh (wa'logh, cha'logh, etc.).
I'll agree that we haven't seen numbers take noun suffixes like other nouns
(and pronouns) -- at least, I couldn't spot any in a quick look at my notes
-- but this may only be due to the limitations of the relatively small
corpus. Okrand actually uses very few numbers in complete sentences; most
occur in sentence fragments. Hmmm, I wonder how Type 4 suffixes on a number
would be understood by Maltz?
?Hutlh wa'wIj One of mine is missing.
?romuluSngan chaH cha'vam'e' These two are Romulan(s).
Voragh