tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jan 06 19:59:03 2000

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Re: KLBC : A somewhat advanced translation...



[email protected] writes:

> juDmoS the Inquisitive inquired:
>  
>  :                           When the verb qIj (be black) is used 
adjectively 
> 
>  : here, the locative suffix -Daq is attached to the adjective, rather than
>  the 
>  : noun. Why exactly is this ? It would seem to be more correct to say they
>  are 
>  : *in* the *fleet*, which just happens to be *black*... but the locative 
is 
>  : attached to the *black* and not the *fleet* It's a noun suffix attached
>  to a 
>  : verb being used adjectively.  [snip]  Why isn't it 'ejyo'Daq qIj ?
[...]
>  If you want chapter and verse for the rule pagh refers to, see TKD section
>  4.4 "Adjectives" (p.50):
>  
>    If a Type 5 noun suffix is used (section 3.3.5), it follows the
>    verb, which, when used to modify the noun in this way, can have
>    no other suffix except the rover {-qu'} 'emphatic'. the Type 5
>    noun suffix follows {-qu'}.
>  
>                    {veng tInDaq}  "in the big city"
>                 {veng tInqu'Daq}  "in the very big city"
>  
>  A better question would be *why* did Okrand create this rule?  Did he have
>  some other language in mind, perhaps one of the California Amerindian
>  languages he studied in graduate school?  Did he just want to add a piece
>  of unusual, or unpredictable, syntax to what is still a very regular,
>  predictable grammar - perhaps overly regular, like too many artificial
>  languages.  Or was he just felling a bit contrary that day?  
>  

My personal opinion is that, to the Klingon mind, there is no real distinction
between the grammar of a complex word made from a noun + adjective and
a noun + adjective phrase.  That is, the Klingons see a word like {bIQtIq}
'river' as being sematically the same as {bIQ tIq} 'long water'; the only 
difference
would be that long usage recognizes the fomer as a bound expression
representing something different that 'long water'.  This being the case,
they put Type 5 noun suffixes at the end of the meaning unit of noun + 
adjective.
It would seem unnatural to them to separate them.

-- ter'eS

http://www.geocities.com/~teresh_2000


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