tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Oct 17 02:06:59 1997
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Re: mu'tlheghmey Qatlh
- From: Qov <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: mu'tlheghmey Qatlh
- Date: Fri, 17 Oct 1997 02:06:44 -0700
At 16:27 97-10-16 -0700, Qermaq wrote:
}ghItlh Qov:
}
}>> Before we celebrate our victory, we need to defeat the last enemy.
}yaymajmo' maloppa' jagh Qav wIjeynIS
}Because we don't know if we can celebrate something, this is the safest
}translation.
va. bIyepqu'. vay' wIloplaHbe' net muchpa' Dochmey vIlop jIH. It is safer,
but if we refused to use any verb as transitive before we had an example we
would be paralysed. I will not mark anyone's work wrong only for that reason.
}>Qermaq, mu'tlheghvam DaqontaHvIS nuq Daqel SoH?
}
}As the guards concentrated on my strange clothing, the men who were eating
}in the old restaurant enjoyed the guard's confusion.
}
}I meant to type guards', not guard's, but my translation makes that
}unimportant.
}
}SutwIj Huj lubuStaHvIS 'avwI'pu', mIS 'avwI' 'e' lutIv Qe' ngo'Daq Sopbogh
}loDpu'.
Did I not send my correction to the list?
What does {Qe' ngo'Daq Sopbogh loDpu'} mean?
"in the old restaurant that the men were eating"
"the old restaurant where the men were eating"
"the men who were eating in the old restaurant"
I'm trying to tell you that marking the location of a relative clause with
{-Daq} in this manner is suspect. You think you are saying "the men who
were eating in the old restaurant" but you are most probably attributing the
enjoyment to the restaurant, if you are not saying gibberish.
}The thing I dislike about your translation,
}
}>SutwIj Huj lubuStaHvIS 'avwI'pu', Qe' ngo'Daq 'avwI' mIS'e' lutIv
}>SoplI'bogh loDpu'.
}
}is that it seems to imply that the guards were in the restaurant too. In
}fact, the English gives no location for them, only for the men eating.
Do you think it implies they are both in the restaurant? I decided it was
ambiguous and unimportant. One could write {Qe'vo' 'avwI' mIS'e' lutIv} to
be specific about the guards not being in the restaurant.
}like the -lI' suffix, though it might assign too much importance to that
}part of the sentence.
Without {-lI'} or {-taH} (I couldn't tell which was appropriate from the
English) you get the men who ate, or who eat, or who will eat, and lose the
idea that eating as an ongoing process during the other action of the sentence.
}I understand the -'e' on mIS, but its use isn't
}hindsight-proof - is it "the guard's CONFUSION"?
Doesn't matter. There isn't really anything else in the clause for it to be
drawing focus from. It is "the guard's *confusion*, as opposed to the
confused guard.
}That's why I used a sentence-as-object construction. This sets up a separate
}sentence for the locative to refer to which deals only with the men.
}Recasting the object "the guard's confusion" into the sentence-as-object
}"The guard is confused" is key to what I was thinking as I wrote it.
}
}The one debatable point is this - can locatives be used in a relative clause
}sentence at all? This is not a "ship in which he fled" problem, but is my
}translation clear? I think it is - let me know!
It is not 'ship in which he fled.' It's a little of the 'cat in the hat'
problem, either complicated or alleviated, depending on your point of view,
by the relative clause. We know that nouns in a relative clause can have
the {-Daq} suffix, from the proverb about {meQtaHbogh qachDaq}. I believe
that in the same article where Qanqor speculated that the head noun in a
relative clause could be marked with {-'e'}, he also suggested that another
type 5 suffix could do the job, if appropriate. Don't remember if MO's
acceptance of the technique included the {-Daq} or not.
I wouldn't say {Qe'Daq SoplI'bogh loDpu'} unless I was talking about the
restaurant.
Qov [email protected]
Beginners' Grammarian