tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Feb 01 17:39:32 1998

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Re: Locatives and {-bogh} (was Re: KLBC Poetry)



>Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 10:26:42 -0800 (PST)
>From: Marc Ruehlaender <[email protected]>
>
>
>~mark wrote:
><<a lot of stuff snipped>>
>> Actually, if I wanted to say "the captain was eating in the restaurant
>> which the squadron destroyed," I think at this point what I'd like to see
>> is this:
>> 
>>  /-------------------\
>> ?qach Qaw'bogh nawloghDaq SoplI' HoD
>>                       \------------/
>> 
>> Admittedly ambiguous between that meaning and "The captain was eating in
>> the squadron which destroyed the building," but that's normal head-noun
>> ambiguity of relative clauses, which we know exists in Klingon (cf. {Hov
>> ghajbe'bogh ram rur pegh ghajbe'bogh jaj}).
>> 
>.and which could be resolved (partly) by using {-'e'} to give
>
>?qach'e' Qaw'bogh nawloghDaq SoplI' HoD

You're presuming this idea holds water... which is a big if. :)  There are
plenty of arguments.  Still, it's something to think about.

>> This is definitely speculative and controversial, and I wouldn't use it
>> without Okrand's say-so, but frankly it makes sense to me, despite its
>> seeming illogic.  It relies rather heavily on the view of -Daq as a
>> postposition, a view which is unproven, though supported by the grammar we
>> know so far.
>> 
>more speculation: if the above was true, there might be a tendency
>to regard the subject that carries a type 5 suffix/postposition as 
>the head noun if the object is unmarked (bc. you cannot have {-'e'}
>on the subject)

The tendency would be awfully strong, even if the subject were not the head
noun.  More on this in another post.

>well, I am at least going to save this mail. I like the idea...

Aw.... Well, I save pretty much ALL tlhIngan-Hol mail...

~mark


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