tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 28 22:20:41 1999
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Re: Klingon Poetry for College (2nd attempt)
ja' SuStel:
>I was stunned by the wonderfully obvious revelation he produces on pages
>6-7. He quotes THE KLINGON DICTIONARY, page 60: "Any noun in the sentence
>indicating something other than subject or object comes first, before the
>object noun. Such nouns usually end in a Type 5 noun suffix." He points
>out that it says "usually," and not "always," and therefore any "extra"
>nouns in a sentence probably get stuck in the front. Thus,
>
>tIghmaj puqpu' DIghojnISmoH
>We need to teach children our customs.
One problem here is that "children" isn't "the object" of this sentence.
The English verb "teach" has dual meanings, with one teaching either a
topic or a student. The way this sentence uses it, "the object" is the
phrase "our customs" and "children" is the indirect object.
>{puqpu'} "children" is certain the object of {ghojmoH} "cause to learn."
>Thus, {puqpu' DIghojnISmoH} "We need to teach children." {tIghmaj} is a
>noun which doesn't indicate subject or object, and thus by the sentence
>quoted above, it should go in front of the sentence.
But (this is a very large "but") {tIghmaj} is a noun which *does* indicate
the object of {ghoj}! If there is an "extra" noun in the sentence, why is
it not {puqpu'}? It makes a lot of sense to do it that way and consider
that extra noun {puqpu'} to be the recipient of the action, which logically
calls for the noun suffix {-vaD}.
>I'm not saying I think this is NECESSARILY the right interpretation, but I
>like it a whole lot more than {puqpu'vaD tIghmaj DIghojnISmoH}. And as
>Krankor points out, either version has potential to be ambiguous.
It's very arbitrary when {-moH} combines with transitive verb usage, with
many opportunities for ambiguity. So why do you specifically dislike the
one way that we've seen Okrand do it?
>(And I was also pleased to see him suggest my favorite interpretation: that
>the {ghaHvaD quHDaj qawmoH} sentence could have been a special case.)
(Ugh. You don't want to use it, so you'd be happy to dismiss it as an
example? We obviously need some major official clarification on this.)
-- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh