tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Nov 28 23:04:17 1998

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

RE: KLBC Was: Re: prepositional phrases

ghItlh Avraham Chapman:

>>As a learning exercise, I've been translating Doctor Seuss' 'The Cat and
>>the Hat'. Unfortunately, he uses a lot of prepositional phrases and I
>>don't know how to do them. Specifically, I'm looking for 'in the NOUN'
>>where NOUN = any noun. I'm also looking for how to say, 'too much of
>><something>'.

'ej ghItlh Voragh:

>Your first example - "in the NOUN where NOUN" - is a variant of the
>infamous "ship in which I fled" problem, which has been frequently and
>inconclusively debated in this forum. You may have to split this into two
>sentences. There is no law which says that one sentence in English cannot
>become two (or more) sentences in Klingon, or vice versa.

'ej jang Qermaq:

>I think you misread this, Voragh. "looking for 'in the NOUN' where NOUN =
>any noun." "In the ship" is <DujDaq>. "In the leg" is <'uSDaq>. BUT - I
>think pagh had better advise you on this, so I added a KLBC to the header.
>But in the meantime, realize that no formula will work 100% of the time. In
>the event one is found, I'll argue till I'm blue in the face (in the spirit
>of good warrior-ship, of course). :o)

The problem is not <mIvDaq> for "In the hat"; the problem is that a noun
with a type 5 suffix cannot modify another noun. Type 5 suffixed nouns
modify the whole sentence they are attached to. So <mIvDaq vIghro'> is not a
simple noun phrase meaning "the cat in the hat", not is it a complete
sentence. It's a sentence fragment, and one that sounds a little weird.

In this case, though, the best translation does not even involve <-Daq>. The
thing that immediately leaps to my mind when I think about "The Cat in the
Hat" is <mIv tuQbogh vIghro'>. <mIvDaq vIghro'> did not even occur to me
until after I had read this message.


pagh
Beginners' Grammarian

Back to archive top level