tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Oct 31 08:44:18 2001
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Re: ghIj
From: "Sean Healy" <[email protected]>
> >From: "Sean Healy" <[email protected]>
> > > ngugh mevta' bIlbo. Dochvamvo' jaHtaHghach yoH law' Hoch ta'meyDaj
yoH
> >puS.
> > > ghIq qaS Dochmey Dun, 'ach bIH ram law' Dochvam ram puS. 'ochDaq
> >nIteb
> > > loSbogh Qob'a' leghpa' may'na' Suvpu'.
> > >
> > > It was as at this point that Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was
the
> > > bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened
> >afterward
> > > were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the
tunnel
> > > alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.
> The {-ta'} on {mev} was to indicate that the action was intentional and
> completed, but on reflection I see your point. This action wasn't
completed
> prior to the timestamp of the sentence, so it doesn't really need {-ta'}.
If you really do want to talk about intentional acts, and there's no aspect
involved, consider /chIch/.
jIjatlh:
> >ngugh mev bIlbo. ghoSqa'ghachDaj yoH law' Hoch ta'meyDaj yoH puS. ghIq
> >qaS
> >Dochmey Dun, 'ach bIH ram law' ta'vam ram puS. nIteb 'ochDaq may'na' Suv
> >bIlbo, loSlI'bogh Qob'a' leghpa'.
> >
> >I've removed the unneeded aspect suffixes. I changed /jaH/ to /ghoS/ for
> >some taste thing that I can't fully identify. I figure that the REAL
verb
> >suffix you want on the /-ghach/'d verb is /-qa'/: /ghoSqa'ghach/
> >"resumption
> >of course."
jatlh Sean Healy:
> Well, the extra 'Bilbo' feels wrong to me - as there can be no confusion
as
> to the subject of {Suv}, a reindication is not necessary except for
emphasis
> - and the emphasis is not present in the original. That is, clarification
> (your basis for the second 'Bilbo') doesn't seem necessary to me.
I suspect that's because you're thinking in English. In Klingon, we've been
talking about /ghoSqa'ghach/, /ta'mey/, /Dochmey/, /bIH/, /ta'vam/, and even
/'och/ and /'may'na'/, and we haven't seen "bIlbo" in a while. When Klingon
subjects or objects are elided, you don't usually know whether they're
"him," "her," "it," or "they" (of either sort). The subject of /Suv/ has
become pretty muddy if you don't already know what the sentence is supposed
to say.
In Klingon, as is shown in the section of TKD about complex sentences, this
kind of redundancy is normal, and doesn't necessarily indicate emphasis. In
this case, there's no reason to assume any emphasis at all. But when you
think about the passage IN KLINGON, it's not at all clear who's doing /Suv/
unless you state it again, and there's no stigma attached to doing so.
> As to your ordering of the {leghpa'} phrase, I was under the impression
that
> all modifying phrases had to come before the OVS phrase they modified. If
I
> had known it was permissible to put them behind, I would have done it that
> way from the beginning, which would have had the happy side effect of
> avoiding the wrongly placed {'ochDaq nIteb}.
All dependent clauses, except for /-meH/ ones, can go before or after the
OVS part of the sentence.
> I still like the {'ochDaq}
> first, though, I can't really say why.
Because that's the order it appears in in the English, and you're thinking
about the Klingon version in English.
> And Okrand says that adverbials
> don't have to come at the very beginning, just before the OVS. (Although
he
> does say that an element preceding an adverbial is most likely a
timestamp,
> he doesn't say it has to be.)
Adverbial and header noun placement has been a squishy thing, and we don't
have a lot of examples to guide us. Time context nouns (the so-called
"timestamps") tend to come first, yet adverbials are said to come at the
beginning of a sentence, and "header" nouns come before the OVS construction
. . . . I'm not insistent on a particular ordering here.
I think Krankor called it a "header soup." A good description. Anything
that's a single word or noun phrase and isn't an object, verb, or subject
goes in the header soup. But watch out when translating: don't rely on how
it "feels" until you're sure of your Klingon abilities, because what you're
feeling is probably your feelings about the original, not your Klingon
translation.
SuStel
Stardate 1833.3