tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Oct 30 03:59:34 2002

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Re: KLBC




>ghItlh "Gina Robertson" <[email protected]>:
>
> >The boys jumped in the lake.
> >ngeng Sup loDHompu'

At 02:16 AM 10/30/2002 -0500, Quvar wrote:
>You must see the complete definition, not just a part: {Sup} v. "jump (to 
>leap or go over)".
>It's not "jump in" but "jump over".
>So, after correcting the prefix (they-it: lu-) in {ngeng luSup loDHompu'}, 
>it means "The boys jumped
>over the lake".
>I'll leave this to other experts to find a way to say "jump in the lake" :-)

Hmmmm... according to The Klingon Dictionary, {Sup} is listed as just the 
verb "jump", with no further clarification about "in" or "over" something.

According to {pojwI'} (a Klingon language tool that Holtej made), {Sup} was 
listed in the MSN Klingon language resources as "jump (to leap or go 
over)", and Quvar probably modified his notes to reflect this. 
Unfortunately, I believe that we have determined that the "clarified" 
definitions from MSN were made up by the people who created the MSN 
resources, and aren't official definitions from Marc Okrand.

(Another example is that MSN defined {DIS} as a "Block of time needed for 
the Earth to revolve once around the sun, approximately 365.25 Earth days." 
Obviously, the MSN people just took the English word "year" and 
presumptuously expanded on the English definition.)

I think one problem that Gina has been running into (and others have run 
into it before) is that TKD sometimes indicates that some verbs can use an 
object, but sometimes TKD doesn't indicate if a verb can use an object.

For example, the verb {SaH} is listed as "care (about), be concerned 
(about)". Because it has "about" in the definition, you can use an object 
with the verb, such as {ghu SaH qoq} "The robot cares about the baby."

However, the verb {Qong} "sleep" can't take an object (or if it can, we 
don't know what it would mean). Does {ghu Qong qoq} mean "The robot puts a 
baby to sleep" or "The robot sleeps, using a baby for a bed" or "The robot 
sleeps like a baby"? With just the definition of "sleep", we don't know if 
any of these meanings would be correct.

Similarly, unless we're given more information on {Sup} from Marc Okrand, 
we can't assume that the object of {Sup} is jumped-into or jumped-over, or 
even that you can {Sup} something else.

To be on the safe side, I'd suggest Gina rewrite "The boys jumped in the 
lake" keeping the verb as (Sup) and subject as (loDHompu'), as above. 
However, rather than making (ngeng) the object, you can make it the 
location of the sentence, by using the noun suffix {-Daq}. This suffix is 
explained in section 3.3.5. All of the type-5 noun suffixes (explained in 
section 3.3.5) are very useful when you have a noun, but when the noun 
isn't the subject or object in the sentence.
As Quvar already pointed out, in your sentence {SoSDaj jach ghu}, you don't 
want {SoSDaj} as the object. The baby can't "scream his mother", but he can 
scream: {SoSDajmo'} because of his mother, {SoSDajvaD} for the benefit of 
his mother, or even {SoSDajDaq} in his mother (maybe the baby is in the 
process of being born).

Hopefully this gives you some ideas of how to use nouns in sentences, even 
when the noun is neither the subject nor the object. If you have any 
questions, I'm sure Quvar will be happy to explain further or give some 
more examples. :-)

- taD (former Beginners' Grammarian)



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