tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Feb 27 22:02:34 2003

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: -bogh and noun-noun constructions



>What about
>
>nuH Qachbogh qun'e' ?
>
>Or just in general, how would you go about doing this kind of thing?

It sounds like the question you're really asking is: Can a noun phrase 
replace the first noun in a noun-noun construction?  Perhpas Voragh can tell 
us whether canon exmaples of such a thing exist.

Meanwhile, here are some examples out of my own head, in descending order of 
likelihood of acceptability (that is, most likely to be accepted first, 
least likely last).

nuH tIn qun
the big weapon's history

nuH wejDIch qun
the third weapon's history

nuH Qachlu'bogh qun
the wielded weapon's history
(the history of the weapon which is wielded)

nuH Qahbogh loD qun
the history of the weapon which the man wields
the history of the man who wields the weapon

The last example can't be disambiguated because whichever noun would be the 
head noun of the {bogh} clause cannot take {'e'}, since it is also the first 
noun in a noun-noun construction

The third example is what you seem to be going for; I think that the {lu'} 
sufficiently disambiguates the clause; that is, with {lu'} on there, 
nobody's going to think that {qun} is the subject of {Qach}, so there seems 
to be only one way to interpret such a phrase.  However, there's only way to 
interpret {quSDaq loD}, as well, and we know that that construction is not 
allowed.

1) I think everyone will realize what you mean.
2) The conservative members of the list will probably say we can't do it 
without explicit canon examples

>...Paul

Sangqar


_________________________________________________________________
Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. 
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail



Back to archive top level