tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Apr 08 19:51:53 2002

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Re: to' nech, 001: {Hal latlh yIyu', lI'mo' pagh lI'be'mo'}



At 15:59 2002-04-08 -0500, Steven Boozer wrote:
>>K: Hal latlh yIyu', lI'mo' pagh lI'be'mo'.
>>Gloss: Interrogate another source; because this is useful, or not.
>>Eno/Schmidt: Consult other sources -promising -unpromising
>'ISqu':
> > Since <latlh> is a noun, not a verb, I believe it should come before <Hal>:
> > <latlh Hal>
>'ISqu' is correct; {latlh} "additional one, other one, another one" 
>preceeds the noun it modifies.  E.g.:

Oh, it's like Hoch then?  Excellent, I'll add that to my notes.

>A vocabulary note:  {Hal} "source, supply" has been used once by Okrand:
>[...]consider using the noun {vay'} "anybody, anything, somebody, 
>something, someone":
>   latlh vay' yIyu'!
>   Interrogate someone/something else.

Now that I think about it, I suppose I'm being redundant by referring to 
the person interrogated as a "source [of information]" -- whoever one 
interrogates, is a source of information, if you do it right.  Even if they 
refuse to talk, that itself is a kind of information.  So I might as well 
just say {latlh yIyu'!}.  That nicely ducks the question of whether/how 
{Hal} is usable to mean "information source".

>Although we've never actually seen the phrase {latlh vay'} "another 
>someone/thing", there's no grammatical reason this isn't allowed.  It 
>sounds awkward in English, but in Klingon...?

I recall that in a genitive construction, a Noun Noun construction goes in 
the order Possessor Possessed (like "John knife"), but I don't rightly know 
the rules for other situations, like apposition ({yuQ tera'} or {tera' 
yuQ}?), or even whatever situation is there in {latlh N}, if one can even 
generalize from that to other structures.

>Finally, a style note:  Although you can put clauses in either order, good 
>Klingon style - or, at least, Maltz's style - tends to prefer placing the 
>dependent clause first:
>
>   lI'mo' pagh lI'be'mo', latlh vay' yIyu'!

Ohyeah, I noticed that, to the extent that I've even started reading 
sentences right to left sometimes, since I'm so used to the matrix clause 
coming first in every other language.
Anyway, in the case of {[Hal ]latlh yIyu', lI'mo' pagh lI'be'mo'} I was 
aiming for {[Hal ]latlh yIyu'} being the main to' Dup, and then {lI'mo' 
pagh lI'be'mo'} being added entirely as an afterthought, even after a bit 
of a pause.


--
Sean M. Burke    http://www.spinn.net/~sburke/



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