tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jul 25 23:40:02 2001

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RE: Those ever-lovable plural noun suffixes.

I appreciate the reference, but I'm not convinced that it proves anything.
In <ghopDu'lIj yIlo'>, we have the noun for the body part using the
possessive suffix indicating the noun is not capable of using language. By
logic, if you replace that noun with a pronoun, it would be {'oH}, since
that is the pronoun that indicates a thing not capable of language, just
like {-lIj}, but again, language doesn't have to be logical and since we
have no canon replacing such a noun with a pronoun, we don't know that the
body part doesn't get the pronoun belonging to the person the body part is a
part of rather than the pronoun associated with a thing.

I'm not going to push this [much]. My argument is definitely weak and I know
it. I'm just pointing out that it is not a safe bet to make assumptions
about gender in Klingon beyond the strange rules we already know. Please
notice how inconsistent pronouns are by what we DO know:

1st person singular and plural would usually be considered to have the
gender of a being capable of using language, but consider the following
examples:

"I was wounded in the war. Now, my knees tell me that they know it will rain
soon."

qaStaHvIS noH jIrIQchoH. DaH muja' qIvDu'wIj <<tugh SIS 'e' wISov.>>

Note that the knees still get a plural indicating body part gender,
possessive indicating thing not capable of using language, yet in the direct
quotation, the {wI-} refers to the knees. The same entity has all three
genders assigned to them in one example.

"The ship's computer tells me that it needs more information."

muja' Duj De'wI' <<De' vIHutlhbogh vIpoQ!>>

Here the first person is the computer, an entity that Klingons do not
consider to be beings capable of using language in terms of gender.

Similarly, the second person most typically refers to beings capable of
using language, but you can easily talk to your body parts or to your ship
or weapons. Like the first person pronoun, the second person pronouns cannot
indicate gender.

Third person pronouns differentiate between beings capable of using language
and things not capable of using language, but since nouns have a third
gender, which is body parts, we can't tell for sure which of the two
pronouns would be used for body parts until we have an actual example. We
know that the "non-language thing" gender is used in the possessive noun
suffix when referring to body parts, but we have no real reason to believe
that there is any relationship between this possessive suffix and the plural
one, let alone pronouns we know to be highly irregular in terms of
indicating gender. After all, intentionally using the wrong gender for the
plural is either considered to be a grammatical error or an indication of
the items being scattered all about, but it is not insulting. The same
intentional use of the wrong gender for the possessive suffix is an insult
if not a grammar error considered acceptable for some poets, but not for
outsiders.

Is that logical?

So why are you expecting pronouns to be more consistant?

charghwI'

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eric Andeen [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 1:55 PM
> To: '[email protected]'
> Subject: RE: Those ever-lovable plural noun suffixes.
>
>
> charghwI':
>
> > . . .
>
> > 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 do know of one example, from Conversational Klingon. It doesn't answer
> your question, and it probably contains an error, but it's still
> relevant. I
> don't have a transcript of it anywhere, so this is from memory.
>
> When the human tourist is at the Klingon restaurant, she asks the
> server how
> she is supposed to eat since she has no utensils. The server replies
> <ghopDu'lIj yIlo'>. The prefix should be <tI-> since the object is plural,
> but CK is full of minor errors like this.
>
> pagh
>

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