tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 04 17:27:00 1999

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RE: beginner trying to read thread (RE: pure terror)

jatlh John:

>> ja' quljIb:
>>>...jIHvaD SIchbogh QIbmey QIbDu''e' vIlegh...

> "I see shadows (from above?) trying to reach for me."

> Is that reasonably accurate?  Could someone explain 
> the use of <<QIbmey QIbDu''e'>> please?

That is quite accurate, except for the "from above".

<QIbmey QIbDu''e'> is a rather strange but very descriptive phrase. Shadows
are terrorizing poor quljIb, they have shadows for body parts, and those
body parts are reaching out to him. It's a simple noun-noun possessive
construction, and the <-Du'> on the second noun indicates that the shadows
in question are body parts.

>> Dat nuv lughIjlu'law'bogh vItu'.

> I don't quite understand the syntax.  Noun-Noun-Verb-Verb.  
> Two nouns in a row is possesive or vocative, either way I 
> grok "people everywhere".  But what's two concecutive verbs 
> do?  I think I know, and will presently look up the affixes 
> and read the K.D. to be sure.  But if someone could tell me 
> the correct translation of the sentence, it would be 
> enlightening.

<Dat> is one of the three nouns with an inherent locative, so that should be
easy enough. 

The important thing in figuring out the verb confusion is the <-bogh>
suffix. <-bogh> is the relative clause marker. A relative clause modifies a
noun, so it fits into a sentence just fine - there is still only one real
verb in the main clause.

The easiest way to intepret a relative clause is to identify the subject
and/or object of the verb and then just figure out what the clause would
mean as its own sentence without the <-bogh>. The object here is <nuv>, and
there is no subject, so we have to figure out <nuv lughIjlu'law'>. This
translates as "People are apparently scared". 

Once you know what the relative clause would mean as its own sentence, you
then have to identify the head noun. If the clause only has an explicit
subject or object, but not both, then it's easy. If it has both, we won't
deal with it in this message :) So the head noun here is the object, <nuv> -
"people", and the whole relative clause turns into "the people who are
apparently scared".

Putting it all together, you get:

I find people who are apparently scared everywhere.


pagh
Beginners' Grammarian

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