tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jun 14 13:20:04 2002
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Re: ??HolDaq
Okrand wrote SuStel:
>> jabbI'IDlIj vIlaDpu'. qep'a' wejDIchDaq jatlhtaH tlhIngan Hol
>> HaDwI'pu'. ghoHtaH je. tIv'eghtaH je. vaj SuquvmoH.
Voragh:
>>The only oddity is his putting {-Daq} on the ordinal number {wejDIch}
>>"third". Is this a clue that ordinals can take noun suffixes? At the
>>time, SuStel interpreted {qep'a' wejDIch} as being a proper noun, like most
>>named academic conferences in academia Okrand would have been familiar
>>with, and was therefore an exception: i.e. "at The Third [KLI] Conference".
Sangqar:
>At first glance, this just seemed to me like using verbs
>adjectivally. Like stative verbs when used as adjectives, ordinal numbers
>follow the noun.
>Like stative verbs when used as adjectives, ordinal numbers describe the
>noun. Therefore, like stative verbs when used as adjectives, ordinal
>numbers take any Type 5 suffixes that belong to the noun phrase. I would
>probably apply this rule to an ordinal number without thinking about it,
>which is apparently what MO did. I wouldn't jump to conclusions by
>guessing that ordinal numbers can take just any noun suffix.
That would be the more conservative interpretation. We do know that Type 5
("syntactic marker") noun suffixes behave a bit oddly. For example, they
are attached to the following modifying quality of a noun, if it has one,
*not* the noun itself. Cf. TKD p.50:
If a Type 5 noun suffix is used (section 3.3.5), it follows the verb,
which, when used to modify the noun in this way, can have no other
suffix except the rover {-qu'} "emphatic". The Type 5 noun suffix
follows {-qu'} ... {veng tInqu'Daq} "in the very big city".
Without this rule we would have had to say *{vengDaq tInqu'}.
Perhaps using {-Daq} on a following ordinal, which occupies the same
position as a modifying quality - e.g. {veng wa'DIch}, {veng tInqu'} - is a
variant of this rule. It may feel more natural for Klingons to put these
particular noun suffixes on the modifier, even if it isn't a noun. Put
them on the entire noun + modifier phrase in other words: {[veng
wa'DIch]Daq}, {[veng tInqu']Daq}, etc.
As always, it would be nice to have more examples.
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons