tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Sep 06 10:42:25 2002
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Re: tlhIngan Hol lujatlhbogh puq'e'
>>>Actually, the term 'genitive' has been used on this list to describe
>>>the function of the first noun in a noun-noun construction. To slip
>>>into the fiction of Klingon for a bit, I suspect that long ago,
>>>there was a 'genitive' syntactic marker, and like the other
>>>syntactic markers it was a Type 5 suffix. This would explain why
>>>nouns occupying that grammatical role can't take Type 5 suffixes -
>>>it's a holdover from when those nouns had Type 5 suffixes of their
>>>own.
>>
>>Sangqar,
>>normally, t5-suffixes mark nouns that go into the header. it would
>>have been a strange t5-suffix that doesn't need a "-bogh"-clause,
>>wouldn't it?
>
>Well, it was just conjecture, but if it were true, it would not have
>seemed strange to the Klingon speakers of that time perios, any more
>than Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Beowulf would have seemed starnge to
>their original audience. I assume you're German; don't Martin
>Luther's writings sound a little odd to modern ears? And yet to
>Germans of his day, they were perfectly normal (well, maybe they
>were a little more formal than most German of the day).
>
>In the same way, this "Old Klingon" sounds strange to us, but would
>have been normal to Klingons at the time it was spoken.
>
>For those who haven't been following this thread (and yet have read
>this far anyway), this "Old Klingon" is not referring to Okrand's
>no' Hol, but to a premise based completely upon conjecture, so don't
>get confused.
Sangqar,
i am german. and yes, of course, a kind of old klingon could have had
the ability to combine two nouns, when the first one is a type 5
noun. who knows, maybe "qabDaq qul" in an old klingon was a valid
noun-noun phrase. and maybe in an old klingon there was even a type 5
suffix in order to create adverbials. then there would have been a
difference between /Do'/ and /Do'/ (maybe /Do'nargh/?), or even a
timestamp type 5 suffix that distinguishes between /ram/ and /ram/,
hm, maybe /rampoH/?
but this is just science fiction. :)
tulwI',
sts.