tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 06 05:39:47 2002

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Re: [Fwd: -bogh]



QInteS wrote:

>On page 63 of TKD it says compare the following:

>     qIppu'bogh yaS   -   officer who hit him

>     This I understand.   It's the translation of the next one that has me
>     stumped...

>     yaS qIppu'bogh   -  officer whom he hit

>     This makes it sound like it's still the officer we're talking about.
>     But what if I was talking about the "he" who hit the officer?  What if I
>     wanted to say, "He who hit the officer fled?"

>     Haw'pu' yaS qIppu'bogh.

>     But then if I wanted to say, "The officer whom he hit fled", it would be
>     the same sentence?

*Gasp*! You mean something written in TKD is causing confusion????? But... 
but I thot it was all crystal clear.

Ok, back to serious. This insightful post of QInteS's illustrates a point. 
His is an astute theoretical observation of the grammar. Now, as any 'utlh 
will tell you, there are a couple of conventions that have developed among us 
regarding -bogh:

1) The head noun of a relative has to be explicit.
   (So, "he who hit the officer" ought to be "yaS qIppu'bogh ghaH")

2) A relative clause with both a subject and object is only disambiguated 
when -'e' is on the head noun.
   (So, "yaS qIppu'bogh ghaH'e'" is even better for "he who hit the officer")

Neither of these are explicitly in TKD. Both of them were adopted by many 
people on this list prior to Okrandian sanction. Another group of Klingonists 
working independently in, say, Moscow may have decided differently, and their 
tlhIngan Hol would then take a different direction. I know that this kind of 
thing happens, because I have observed various dialects of tlhIngan Hol 
cropping up among Klingonists I interlocute with who are less centrally 
involved in this list. There is inestimable value in advancing new, 
interesting ideas, and posting them here. It allows for convention, and 
besides that, it is another "sanctioned" language activity, cf. the following 
from HolQeD 4:2 pp.5-6.

Okrand wrote:

>one of the things that pleases me about all 
>    this stuff is not so much when people talk about the details of the 
>    language, although that's fine, is when they talk about language at 
>    all. So this guy came up with this idea of putting {­'e'} at the end, 
>    that's a very clever idea, right or wrong. 

yap tlhIngan Hol 'ach yapbe' tlhIngan Hol'e' wISovqu'bogh. reH Sov 
ghurnISlu'. tlhIngan Hol pab 'ay''e' QIjchu'be'chugh TKD, English Hol pab rur 
'oH net QubnISbe'. pab 'ay' 'aghbe'chugh canon, 'oH Hutlh Hol net 
QubnISbe'qu'.

--ghuy'Do


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