tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jun 15 06:32:38 1998
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Re: cheghta' be'nalwI' - jajmaj wa'DIch
On Sun, 14 Jun 1998 20:15:49 -0700 (PDT) Alan Anderson
<[email protected]> wrote:
> >>ja' pagh:
> >>>(1) I've always been curious about this usage - *Sarah* lupDuj =
> >>>"Sarah's plane". I'm not sure the Klingon can go there. She certainly
> >>>doesn't own the thing - it is just associated with her for the moment...
tlhIngan Hol.
Do you suggest that the Klingon owns the language? Do you
suggest that this is some form of apposition?
You can't hold to any strict sense of possession in a noun-noun
possessive construction. The "genitive" meaning is actually more
accurate, judging by Okrand's examples. Basically, any time you
could phrase it as "X's Y" or "the Y of X", it works as "X Y" in
Klingon.
> ja' Voragh:
> >{*Sarah* lupDuj} is perfectly kosher. In fact, in ST5 Okrand used a nearly
> >identical phrase:
> >
> >Vixis: nImbuS wejDaq 'ejDo' 'entepray' ngeHlu'pu'.
> > The starship Enterprise has been dispatched to Nimbus III.
> >Klaa: 'entepray''e'? qerq Duj 'oH!
> > Enterprise? That's Kirk's ship!
> >
> >Obviously Kirk doesn't possess or own the ship, it's just closely associated
> >with him.
>
> I hesitate to call these kinds of close association "nearly identical". The
> association between a captain and his ship is very nearly one of possession;
> it is at least one of complete control. A passenger or crewman aboard that
> ship doesn't have an association nearly as close as the captain does.
>
> >There's another noun-noun construction here {'ejDo' 'entepray'}:
> >again the "starship" doesn't actually own the Enterprise, Starfleet does.
>
> I think this has to be interpreted as something other than the kind of
> noun-noun described in TKD, though. It's an instance of apposition.
>
> >The confusion comes in Okrand's infelicitous choice of the term "possession"
> >for one noun directly modifying another. Indeed, in his first example in TKD
> >(p.31) {nuH pegh} "the secret of the weapon, the weapon's secret", there is
> >no question of ownership. He probably wanted to avoid terms like "genitive"
> >or "construct" in what was, after all, intended as a popular book on the
> >Klingon language.
>
> The {nuH pegh} example sure sounds like ownership to me, but I discovered
> some time ago that my idea of "possession" or "ownership" matches closely
> the linguistic idea of "genitive".
>
> -- ghunchu'wI'
charghwI'