tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 24 01:13:16 2001

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Those ever-lovable plural noun suffixes.



A few questions concerning the plural noun suffixes.

1. -Du'

If -Du' is affixed to an otherwise regular -mey noun, could it be 
interpreted as meaning a body part, if such an interpretation would make 
sense? For example, could 'ay'Du' be considered as something like "body 
parts", or would I just get confused stares from the Klingons in the 
vincinity? Or, with the -wI' suffix, something like {HuH ngaSwI'Du'} "gall 
bladders"? (A similar question could be asked for -pu'. For example, 
Hannibal Lecter could refer to various dishes he cooks up as Sojpu'.) 
Granted, these are somewhat extreme cases, but I was just asking out of 
curiosity. (Perhaps these uses could just be considered "poetic," like using 
-mey with body parts.)

Just out of curiosity, *is* there a word for "body part"? {porgh 'ay'}? 
{mojaq <-Du'> ghajnISbogh Doch}?

2. Would Data, and his brother Lore, use -mey or -pu'? Talking computers, 
like the Enterprise's, get -mey, but it seems that Data and Lore would 
warrant more than talking computer status. For that matter, what would the 
Borg use? They're part machine, part living being, and the fact that they 
share a single mind might screw up any notion of plurality.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I noticed that Klingon nouns and pronouns have 
two different sets of grammatical gender: Nouns have three genders; language 
speakers, body parts, and everything else (neuter, perhaps), while pronouns 
only have a speaking/nonspeaking distinction. Perhaps at some point in the 
history of the Klingon language, there were likewise three genders of 
pronouns, like with nouns, but the body part and neuter genders got mixed 
together.

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