tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jun 25 08:32:29 2002

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Re: Headers. Yet again.



> >> vangDI' ghot, quvmoH tuqDajvaD.
>
> > bIvbej. moH je. "When a person acts, for his family honors him."
>
>
>jaS vImugh 'e' vImaS: "When a person acts, what brings honor is the fact
>that he does it for his house." But that's beside the point. I had two
>motives for making my examples as persuasive as possible:
>
>1) to show that the far-reaching implications of SuStel's theory won't
>always be ruled out by the "meaningfulness" criterion;

I had no idea what you meant until you provided your translation.  Unless a 
significant number of people did, you have failed as far as your first 
motive is concerned.  I'd be interested to know how many people read that 
and got the meaning you intended.

I would render it:

tuqDajvaD vangmo' ghot, quvmoHlu'.

or if you really want the {-DI'}:

tuqDajvaD vangDI' ghot, quvmoH ghu'vam.

My first instinct as far as using nouns with a Type 5 suffix as a subject or 
object is to say no (with the already abundantly mentioned exceptions of 
{'e'} and verbs of motion).  I know that Klingon is not English, but perhaps 
an analogy would help.  These nouns are more or less the equivalent of a 
prepositional phrase.  I can't imagine a native speaker using a 
prepositional phrase as a subject or object unless he was deliberately 
breaking the rules to acheive an effect.  The native speakers listening 
would know it was wrong, but they would know what he meant.

I have to admit that TKD does not explicitly prohibit subjects or objects 
from having these suffixes.  All it actually says is that nouns that aren't 
subjects or objects need these suffixes, and then mentions some exceptions 
to this rule.  But the way it singles out two cases in which they do seems 
to me to imply that generally they don't.

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