tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jun 12 10:26:22 1998

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Relative clauses

ghunchu'wI' gave excellent examples of splitting each of these 
into two sentences. I definitely think this is valid and for 
many of these, the only reasonable approach. I'll try to use 
relative clauses here where possible.

On Thu, 11 Jun 1998 15:14:56 -0700 (PDT) [email protected] 
wrote:

> Although some of you are going to say that this subject has been adequately
> covered before, I request clarification.
> 
> I want to know how Klingon covers relative clauses, which is still troublesome
> to me.  I have included several examples to gain further insight from you, the
> experts.
> 
> I know why the serpent worms are in the sauce.

ghevI'Daq qagh lanmoHlu'bogh meq'e' vIyaj.

Thanks. That was fun. Of course, I'm now slightly tilted in my 
chair...

> I know what the restaurant normally serves.

Qe' HIDjolev motlh vIqaw.

I think this is better than the more literal:

roD Soj'e' jabbogh Qe' vIngu'laH.

I like it better mostly because it is less ambiguous, since you 
can't tell whether this means, "I can identify the food which 
the restaurant usually serves," or "I can usually identify the 
food which the restaurant serves." One might argue that these 
meanings are similar in an accidental way, but the earlier 
version simply works better for me.

> I see how the cook prepares the dumplings.

vutwI' chab vutmeH mIW vIbej.

This one contains another accidentally identical ambiguity. 
There really is no difference between the cook's method for 
cooking dumplings and the method for cooking the cook's 
dumplings.

> I told the warriors how many prisoners to kill.

This is a difficult one because Okrand has not addressed the 
"how many" issue very thoroughly. He still won't give us 
{'arlogh} or an equivalent as a question word. I'll make a 
couple stabs at it:

SuvwI'pu'vaD qama'pu' HoHmeH mI' vIwuqta'.

qama'pu' mI''e' luHoHnISbogh SuvwI'pu' vIwuqta'.

This only works if you interpret {qama'pu' mI'} to be "number of 
prisoners". I have accomplished deciding upon the number of 
prisoners the soldiers must kill. You may argue about the 
difference between deciding upon something (which might not be 
revealed) and telling the soldiers the number, but this gets 
into really ugly stuff about verbs of speech I'd just as soon 
not dig into. I don't see it as productive and I do see it as 
confusing. If this is important, then:

SuvwI'pu'vaD qama'pu' mI''e' luHoHnISbogh SuvwI'pu' vI'angta'.

I think it works, but I don't like it. I think ghunchu'wI's 
method works better here.

> The warriors don't go to the places where we found the prisoners.

As I said in the other message, this really doesn't work as a 
relative clause because the relative clause would be: "to the 
places where we found the prisoners" or:

*DaqDaq qama'pu' DItu'bogh*

But we don't want the prisoners to be the head noun. We want the 
places to be the head noun. Klingon doesn't let us do that. The 
head noun MUST be either the subject or direct object of the 
verb wtih {-bogh}. This leaves us to massively simplify this by 
breaking it into two sentences, as I did in the other message.
 
> Maybe I can clear this up yet and not have to ask again.  Please include your
> own sentences if you think they can help me.

The thing to keep in mind is that Klingon has no relative 
pronouns. In English, we use relative pronouns that also happen 
to be question words in almost every instance of a relative 
clause. Klingon NEVER uses a relative pronoun. Instead, it 
accomplishes the task of a relative clause through the use of a 
head noun paired with a verb with {-bogh}. There must always be 
an explicit head noun, and that head noun must always be either 
the subject or object of the verb with {-bogh}. There is no 
other valid relative clause construction. 

For anything that cannot be expressed by this construction, you 
need to go to some other grammatical construction in Klingon, 
like a purpose clause in some instances, or simply breaking the 
one English sentence into two grammatically independent sentences
in Klingon. Often the equivalent of a head noun in one sentence 
is represented by an explicit noun with {-vam} in the second 
sentence. While the sentences remain syntactically independent, 
this symantically links them.
 
Does this help?

> peHruS
 
charghwI'

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