tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jun 08 13:03:33 1998

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Re: jIQuch

According to Christiane Scharf:
> 
> ja' charghwI':
... 
> > > DaHjaj jabbI'IDvam vIHev. vIleghDI' jISeychu'. nuq mujatlh?
> >
> > loQ Huj mu'tlheghvam. Qaghchu'be' 'ach Huj. <<nuq muja'?>>
> > bIjatlh 'e' vIpIH. You've apparently used the shortcut for
> > indirect object, which is acceptable, but unusual in this
> > setting, given that {ja'} uses the person addressed as direct
> > object.
> 
> I thought of that when I wrote this. {nuq mujatlh?} - "What did it say to
> me?", equivalent to {jIHvaD nuq jatlh?}. I wonder if {nuq muja'} is correct,
> given, as you say, that {ja'} uses the person addressed as direct object. That
> shortcut is for indirect objects only, right? So, how would "What did it tell
> me?" be said? Can a verb have two direct objects?

Hmmm. You have a point. I was apparently using the question
word to replace the entire quote, which is grammatically
independent from the sentence describing the speech. That is at
least as unattested as what you did. Likely moreso.

Thinking about it a little more slowly, I think we could have
avoided all this with {nuq 'oH?} or {nuq 'oH QInvam'e'?}. After
all, the message doesn't tell you anything. The message IS
something. The person who sent you the message told you
something, but the message itself doesn't really speak.

> > [...]
> >
> > > Qu' wejDIchvaD juHDaq ghItlh'a' vIqonnIS. ja'chuqnIS Qu' loSDIchvaD
> > > jeSbogh nuvpu'.
> >
> > nuqjatlh? I've never seen a relative clause with its own
> > indirect object before.
> 
> Is it wrong or just unusual? 

One of the big things I push for when writing Klingon, for
clarity, is to maximize the way Klingon uses word order to
offer meaning, as spoken, minimizing how much you need to
memorize and then reinterpret once you see that things were not
the way they seemed. The exercise is to translate a sentence as
you hear it:

ja'chuqnIS = They must discuss.

ja'chuqnIS Qu' = The missions must discuss?

ja'chuqnIS Qu' loSDIchvaD = For the benefit of the fourth
missions must discuss? This looks wrong because we have an
indirect object following a main verb. Now, none of this makes
sense. It all has to be memorized so that the later words will
explain what is going on.

ja'chuqnIS Qu' loSDIchvaD jeSbogh = ? Okay, we'll memorize yet
another word, waiting for some meaning to happen.

ja'chuqnIS Qu' loSDIchvaD jeSbogh nuvpu'.

Okay, now, reanalyzing the whole thing, we can see that {nuvpu'}
is the head noun of {jeSbogh}, and {Qu' loSDIchvaD must be the
indirect object of {jeSbogh}, so, {Qu' loSDIchvaD jeSbogh
nuvpu'} is the whole relative clause acting as a single noun,
which is subject of {ja'chuqnIS}.

That is easy to parse if you read it and skip around the order,
but if you heard it, you would be confused while several words
were spoken to you. You'd have to memorize those words without
understanding them and then sort out the meaning from memory.

See my point? This is why we don't see many examples in canon
like this. It is really ugly Klingon. There may not be any
rules against it, but then no rules there are against, in
English, this sentence I am now writing, either. That doesn't
make it clear.

Meanwhile, it is MUCH easier to understand:

ja'chuqnIS Qu' loSDIch jeSwI'pu'.

While there are some of the same transitional curiosities,
there is never a point where the grammar appears to be wrong as
you hear this:

ja'chuqnIS = They must discuss.

ja'chuqnIS Qu' = The missions must discuss?

ja'chuqnIS Qu' loSDIch = The fourth missions must discuss?

ja'chuqnIS Qu' loSDIch jeSwI'pu'. = The fourth mission's
participants must discuss.

> From its position in the sentence, the indirect
> object has to belong to the relative clause. There's no other possibility. Let
> me think of a better example.
> {QaQ yaSvaD vInobpu'bogh paq} - "The book I have given to the officer is good."
> I can see no problem here.

QaQ = It is good.

QaQ yaSvaD = This is gibberish. I have to start memorizing
words.

QaQ yaSvaD vInobpu'bogh = gibberish. There's something here
about an officer for whom I gave "it" and being good. The
grammar doesn't fit yet.

QaQ yaSvaD vInobpu'bogh paq. It is STILL gibberish. I think you
meant to put the word {paq} after the word {yaSvaD}. Then it
would have been difficult, but possible to parse. Now, it is
simply wrong.

> {yaSvaD vInobpu'bogh paq DalaD} - "You read the book I have given to the
> officer" 

This is relatively easy to parse, except that you made the same
error in word order. {paq} belongs before {vInobpu'bogh}.
Meanwhile, it does stand very near the mess Okrand created by
allowing head nouns to have Type 5 suffixes on them in order to
act as Type 5 nouns in the main clause. I really don't like
this.

In this case, I find it far simpler to break it down into two
sentences:

paq DalaD. yaSvaD paqvam vInobpu'.

It would be as good as:

yaSvaD paq vInobpu'. paqvam DalaD.

It just depends on whether you want to emphasize that I had
given it to the officer, or that you were reading it.

> Admittedly, there might be cases when the relative clause modifies
> the object of the main sentence, where the indirect object can either belong
> to the main sentence or to the relative clause.

This is why it is better to have more, simpler sentences than
try to pile things together in an English style, overburdening
Klingon's grammar. The word order is so significant in Klingon
that for clarity, you really need to consider how much you are
requiring someone to memorize before they start to get the
grammatical structure of the sentence, even before the actual
meaning of the words sinks in.

In English, we have helping words so we understand phrases as
we hear them before they are assembled into whole sentences.
Klingon doesn't have helper words. Instead, Klingon grammar
reveals itself through a dance between affixes and word order.
It does not really support the kind of grammatical complexity
within the context of a single sentence that English speakers
(especially college educated English speakers) would like to
construct.

> > This would have been more readily
> > understood as:
> >
> > ja'chuqnIS Qu' loSDIch jeSwI'pu'.
> 
> Agreed -- in this case...
> 
> >
> >
> > > pItlh. Qaghmey bo'ang boneHchugh qoj tuqeS boneHchugh qoj Sujang neH
> > > boneHchugh, pebaH!
> >
> > majQa'. tlhoS bIjatlhchu'. Dajanglu' 'e' Dabaj, vaj qajang.
> >
> > > HovqIj
> >
> > charghwI'
> 
> HovqIj

charghwI'

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