tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jul 25 00:23:43 2001

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RE: Those ever-lovable plural noun suffixes.

For the most part, I have to agree more with SuStel's response to this
original message at points where it contrasts to ghuyDo' wa''s response.
Details below.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 1:59 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Those ever-lovable plural noun suffixes.
>
>
> >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
>
> This is a strange set of cases. I remember some rare instances
> where people
> did this and it felt natural, for example, sometime back in the day, we
> liked the term nuHDu'. I usually saw it as "fighting fists" but it could
> feasibly be any fighting extremity.

While I could see this as a sort of slang talk, I tend to think it is more a
matter of body part nouns get body part suffixes and non-body-part nouns get
non-body-part suffixes. That's why the pot with the "elbow" handles gets the
body part suffix even though it is not a body part. {DeSqIv} gets {-Du'}
whether the "elbows" are on a person or a pot. I doubt that we can safely
assume that {nuH} would be used to indicate a weapon even if it is a body
part. We don't understand the meaning of the word {nuH} to know whether it
means "thing that injures people", which could include body parts or whether
it means "tool one manipulates in order to hurt people". For all we know, it
means "tool" with a general focus on tools that are particularly effective
as damaging agents to enemies. It just depends on what a Klingon means by
the word, and we have only a vague idea of what {nuH} encompasses. If it
means "thing that extends the hand", then it can't mean the hand itself.

> >Just out of curiosity, *is* there a word for "body part"? {porgh 'ay'}?
> >{mojaq <-Du'> ghajnISbogh Doch}?
>
> Yes, we always used to say porgh 'ay'. I *supposed* -Du' would be in order
> when taking the plural. I don't know what MO would say (but he ain't here,
> is he? :)

This is just my opinion, but to me, it just sounds like slang; like someone
intentionally bending the language, like I did when I said {DujlIj *nom*
law' DujwIj *nom* puS.} I know what I mean. You know what I mean. We both
know it's "wrong". I might say it to a friend to get my point across, but I
would never argue that it is right.

> An interesting aside: As the marked use of -mey connotes "scattered all
> about", I often felt that -pu' and -Du' have a default connotation of
> organizedness. "porgh 'ay'mey" almost seems marked, like you had to be
> talking about dismembered corpses on a battlefield.

I think it all depends on context. I don't assume that the use of {-mey} on
a singular noun that has a plural form means that there is any kind of
dichotomy with scatteredness and {-mey} at one end and organizedness and
{-Du'} or {-pu'} on the other. For one thing, the use of {-mey} to indicate
scattered all about for body parts is very marked to the point of being
grammmatically incorrect and used only in certain Klingon poetry, if I
remember correctly, and its use is not understood by outsiders. I don't
think we can assume this is area of grammar is symmetrical in the way being
suggested here.

> >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
>
> A good lesson for plural suffixes is don't overthink it. Because Data and
> Lore walk, talk, and behave very much like sentient beings,
> qoqpu' seems the
> best term. But the less humanoid the robot is, the less inclined
> I would be
> to use -pu', tending instead toward -mey. So clunky, R2D2-type
> robots would
> always warrant -mey, but HAL 9000 and his similars might just deserve a
> -pu'. It's a very fuzzy line between them. Sometimes either one is
> appropriate, and it depends on how much of a social relationship
> you have to
> the thing in question, e.g. babies, pets, chatterbots. The distinction is
> fuzzy even in English. If I got stuck on a deserted island and
> had only the
> trees to keep me company, you can bet I would eventually start
> calling them
> Sorpu'. Well, the Klingon ones, anyways.

"I'm sorry, Wilson! I'm sorry, Wilson!" Tom Hank's skill as an actor is
evidenced by his ability to make me cry for a  volleyball lost at sea.

I completely agree with this, though I might argue about Hal. I think
Klingons would likely maintain a sufficient distrust of abstract technology
to consider Hal to be a thing and to accept Data only after getting to know
him enough to judge that by his appearance AND behavior AND verbal skill, he
might attain the gender of a being capable of using language... though there
would likely remain some Klingons who would be sufficiently bigoted to
continue to lump Data into the realm of machines and not beings capable of
using language.

> >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.
>
> ghaytan, ghaytan.

I suspect that body parts are so rarely used with sufficient repetition that
a pronoun is commonly used to replace a repetition of the body part noun to
justify a separate pronoun for body parts. There just aren't enough body
part nouns to justify it.

Remember that pronouns are essentially irregular. They don't get plural
suffixes. They are singular or plural by their arbitrary assignment as
words. They don't have to follow the gender rules of other nouns. For all we
know, they use the "he/she" word and not the "it" word to refer to body
parts. Is there any canon that uses a pronoun to refer to a body part? I
doubt it. So far as we know, it might be proper to say:

roD SeHlaw vISIq 'ach rut DeSqIvwIj vIlo'. rut jeghwI' vIHIvmeH DeSqIvwIj
vIlo'. Qu'mey law'vaD jIH vIlo'.

How do we know I'd say, "I use it," and not "I use me" when referring to my
body part. Well, so far as canon attests, I doubt we know at all. It's what
we do in human languages, but we don't have examples in Klingon that I know
of.

I'm not suggesting that this is how it is done. Obviously, there are
problems with the prefix here. I'm just saying that it could be this extreme
and I don't think we can make assumptions about how it is done or was done
in the past. Language does not have to be logical. It often is, and it often
is not. You can't, for example, look at overall Klingon grammar and then
explain the comparative sentences. They don't follow from anything else in
the language.

> I have only returned to this list as of a short time ago after a long
> hiatus, and it seems many of the people who used to be very active are now
> dormant/lurking. That's the way things go. I would love to hear
> from some of
> them. It's interesting to see how we debate things, especially
> when it's how
> to say certain things, like "body part". There are a lot of tools in
> tlhIngan Hol that still go unused, including a lot of vocabulary.
> Altho I'm
> grateful for the work that Okrand puts into the language now, there is
> something to be said for group concensus. After all, cha' yab qaq
> law', wa'
> yab qaq puS, to quote a Terran. I'm 24 years old, and I've been studying
> Klingon off and on for almost half my life. It's really starting to make a
> little sense to me now. ;)

As one who was here when you were a brilliant little snot who snookered
several linguistics professors into thinking you were one of them when you
were only 15, I definitely welcome you back.

> --Andrew Strader
>   "How are you gentlemen? All your base are belong to us."
>   http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~strader


charghwI'

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