Re: paqmey permey

[willm@cstone.net]

> At 09:17 2002-04-15 -0400, David Trimboli wrote:
> >From: "Sean M. Burke" <sburke@cpan.org>
> >> At 23:58 2002-04-14 -0400, David Trimboli wrote:
> >> >For a simpler case, take this phrase:
> >> >"a weapon for the captain"
> >> >You CANNOT translate this as */HoDvaD nuH/.  Nouns with Type 5 suffixes DO
> >> >NOT modify other nouns.  TKD explicitly forbids this.  You either have to
> >> This is supposedly according to TKD 3.4 (p31 in my copy)?
> >lughchu'.
> 
> I think I give TKD 3.4 a narrower reading that you do. I see it as just
> meaning "when you want to express 'X of Y', the construction for that is
> {Y X} with the proviso that you can't put type 5 suffixes on the Y." I
> don't see it as necessarily a filter against all sequences of
> "noun-with-type-5 noun-with-type-5".

You've missed the point. Forget about all the words except for the one with {-
vaD} on it. Focus on that one word. Now, what does that one word modify?

We only have grammatical justification for having nouns with {-vaD} modifying 
verbs. That's what Type 5 noun suffixes do. They indicate the syntactic 
relationship between the marked noun and its verb.

In Klingon, the syntactic function of a noun is defined positionally for 
subjects, objects and time stamps. Type 5 noun suffixes define all other noun 
functions in a sentence, and every Type 5 noun suffix indicates the grammatical 
relationship between the marked noun and its verb.

There is no verb here. That is why this doesn't work.

> I don't see that as necessarily blocking Agnieszka Solska's phrase "KGT:
> ??qIb lengwI'vaD tlhIngan Hol", since the relationship between
> "qIb lengwI" and "tlhIngan Hol" isn't one of "X of Y", but "X for Y".

You misunderstand the meaning of {-vaD}.

Basically, this is the "Cat in the hat" problem. Klingon cannot translate the 
phrase "Cat in the hat" because {mIvDaq} needs a verb to have meaning. The cat 
WHAT in the hat?

So, going back to the book title, we can imagine that there is a hidden verb, 
but that is very much not in character with the language. English is noun-
centric. Klingon is verb centric. Good translations should adjust for this 
shift in bias.

I'd recommend something like:

qIb lengwI' QaHmeH tlhIngan Hol.

{-meH} clauses can modify nouns. All of these words grammatically hold 
together, even though it is only a noun phrase. The {-vaD} based suggestion 
needs a verb to give the noun marked with {-vaD} meaning.

Welcome to Qo'noS. Expand your mind.

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

Will