tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Apr 26 08:56:52 1999
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RE: KLBC: Clause ordering...is this right?
- From: "Andeen, Eric" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: KLBC: Clause ordering...is this right?
- Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 08:59:22 -0700
jatlh juDmoS:
> Hung tlhab ghap luqotlhtaHHa' Hung luSuqmeH tlhabchaj lujeghqangbogh.
Suffix order: <luqotlhHa'taH>.
I'm also not sure about this use of <jegh>. Every canon use I know of is
intransitive, so I'm not sure if <jegh> could take an object. I think <woD>
would work very well here as an alternative.
> The purpose clause ' Hung luSuqmeH ' (in order to obtain security)
> precedes the relative clause ' tlhabchaj lujeghqangbogh ' ( they
> which are willing to surrender their freedom). This entire
> construction follows the head noun ' luqotlhtaHHa' ' (they are
> undeserving of it) because it is the subject of the sentence. The
> object of the sentence is the phrase ' Hung tlhab ghap '
> ( either security or freedom).
I don't think <Hung tlhab ghap> works. This says that they mis-deserve
(makes perfect sense in Klingon; not so much in English) either security or
freedom, but not both. I think what you mean is that they mis-deserve both
security *and* freedom.
> This was an attempt to translate something I heard on the radio
> today. The quote was : " Anyone who would sacrifice freedom for
> security is deserving of neither."
> Is this correct? Is there a better way to recast this?
> By the way, your comments and those of others regarding my last
> post were appreciated. The use of the -wI' suffix was a stupid
> mistake, and I know better...I just got in a hurry.
This is a perfect example of a <-bogh> clause needing a head noun. The only
reasonable way to interpret <Hung luSuqmeH tlhabchaj lujeghqangbogh> is
"their freedom which they are willing to give up in order to obtain
security". That's not what you want. You want the head noun to be the
subject, so you have to provide an explicit subject in the clause. How about
this:
Hung tlhab je qotlhHa'taH Hung luSuqmeH tlhabchaj luwoDqangbogh ghotpu''e'.
With an explicit subject, the head noun of the <-bogh> clause could now
grammatically be either <tlhabchaj> or <ghotpu'>, and <ghotpu'> is the one
that make sense. I added <-'e'> to make it quite clear which one was
intended.
pagh
Beginners' Grammarian
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