tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Nov 20 04:53:01 1997
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Re: "The ship in which I fled"
ja' "Anthony.Appleyard" <[email protected]>:
> Excuse me raising this topic yet again...
I'm not all that inclined to excuse it. Each time you bring it up, you
receive a complete explanation of why it can't be done the way you want
it to work. The question has been answered, and the answer is "No."
>...The only book that I have that seems
>to have information re how to use {-'e'} is TKD, which says only:-
> (1) TKD 3.3.5 says that on a noun it emphasizes that noun.
> (2) TKD 6.3 describes its use with a noun which is the subject of "be".
> (3) TKD said nothing about -'e' in relative clauses, but TH says that Okrand
>said orally that -'e' can be used to mark the head-word in relative clauses.
This last one is merely a specific case of emphasizing/topicalizing a noun
within a phrase. The only "new" information is the implication that {-'e'}
doesn't have to be marking the real topic of the entire sentence. There is
apparently some "scoping" that can be applied within clauses.
> TKD when describing relative clauses said that "the head-word can either
>follow or precede the noun", but did not seem to me to say explicitly that the
>head-word must be subject or object...
HolQeD 4:2 includes an interview with Marc Okrand. When asked about what
the head of a relative clause can be, he said "I couldn't make the {-bogh}
thing work for me with anything other than subject or object."
> (a) {pa'Daq verengan targh HoHpu'bogh loD'e'} - subject
> (b) {pa'Daq verengan targh'e' HoHpu'bogh loD} - object
Fine.
> (c) **{pa'Daq verengan'e' targh HoHpu'bogh loD} - genitive / owner @
No way. TKD 3.4 says only the second noun of a noun-noun construction
may have a type 5 suffix. There's no trivial grammatical tool to indicate
"the Ferengi associated with the targ I'm referring to" -- indeed, when I
put it that way you can probably see why. It tries to make the topic of
the phrase something other than the noun that's used in the sentence.
In that same HolQeD interview, the interviewer said "So only the subject
or object of a verb can be the head-noun of a relative clause. It doesn't
allow possessing nouns either?" Okrand's response: "Right."
> (d) **{pa'Daq'e' verengan targh HoHpu'bogh loD} - with preposition
Both {-Daq} and {-'e'} are type 5 suffixes, and cannot both appear on the
same noun.
> **{pa'Daq'e' verengan targh HoHpu'bogh loD vISay'qu'nISmoHpu'} would be
> "I had to sterilize the room in which the man had killed the Ferengi's targ."
Since {pa'Daq'e'} is not grammatical, this sentence does not work. But if
you give up the unnecessary requirement that it be translated using only
one sentence, it becomes much easier:
{pa'Daq verengan targh HoHpu' loD. pa'vetlh vISay'qu'nISmoH.}
"A man has killed a Ferengi's targ in the room. I had to sterilize that room."
> Please what was Okrand's exact wording of his oral ruling re usage (3)?
Since you seem to be reluctant to accept second-hand assurance that there
is no direct translation for "the ship in which I fled", I suggest you go
buy at least the June 1995 issue of HolQeD (Volume 4, Number 2) and read
it yourself.
-- ghunchu'wI'