tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Oct 29 15:59:19 2003

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Re: Tao Te Ching Chp. 81

Agnieszka Solska ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

jIghItlh:

>In {law'taH vay' ghajbogh} the subject is {vay' ghajbogh}, i.e. "something 
>which he has". The clause says that something which he has law'taH, i.e. 
>continues to be numerous. The clause might be rephrased as {law'taHbogh 
>vay' ghaj}, i.e. he has something that continues to be numerous. As for 
>{vay' law'taH ghajbogh}, hmmm ... it doesn't seem right.

ghItlh Lawrence:

>Ah, that's the difference then. I was parsing {vay' law'taH} as the object 
>of the phrase, making them the "many somethings" which are possessed. I 
>never thought to look at it as "something which he has are many."
>
>And, the more that I look at it, I still can't. The phrase {vay' ghajbogh} 
>*still* looks to me like it should be translated (badly in English) as 
>"which he had something" where that something is still the object. Why 
>wouldn't your phrase be rendered {ghajbogh vay'} for "something which he 
>had" instead?

>Clearly I need to spend more time working with {-bogh} because I'm still 
>not seeing this. Could a BG enlighten me with a few whacks from the 
>painstick of education?

It took me a while to feel comfortable with {-bogh}. I still occasionally 
get it wrong.

In my translation the confusing fragment is the relative clause {vay' 
ghajbogh}.

Before making my relative clause I started off with a sentence:

   vay' ghaj
   He/she has something.

Here the subject is the unexpressed {ghaH}, the verb is {ghaj} and the 
object of that verb is {vay'}. To make everything explicit I could supply 
the missing subject:

   vay' ghaj ghaH
   He/she has something.

Now, in order to change this sentence to a relative clause I had to put 
suffix {-bogh} on the verb.

   vay' ghajbogh ghaH

The problem is that this sentence is ambiguous.
If we take {ghaH} to be the head noun the meaning is:

   He/she who has something.

If we take {vay'} to be the head noun the meaning is:

   Something which he/she has

Why? The answer can be found in TKD 6.2.3.:

   "Whether the head noun follows or precedes
    the relative clause depends on its relationship
    to that clause. Compare the following:

    {qIppu'bogh yaS} <officer who hit him/her>
    {yaS qIppu'bogh} <officer whom he/she hit>"

Fortunately, we can easily get rid of the ambiguity by putting {-'e'} on 
what we want to function as the head noun. If we want our clause to be about 
{ghaH}, we get:

   vay' ghajbogh ghaH'e'
   He/she who has something.

If we want {vay'} to be the head noun of our clause we put {-'e'} on {vay'} 
and we get:

   vay''e' ghajbogh ghaH
   Something which he/she has

In my clause I didn't use explicit {ghaH} because the context indicates that 
the person who has something is the sage. My clause simply reads:

   vay' ghajbogh
   something which he has

and looks very much like Okrand's example from TKD:

   yaS qIppu'bogh
   <officer whom he/she hit>"

Because {ghaH} is missing there was no need to attach {-'e'} to the object 
noun.

If I changed my clause to {ghajbogh vay'}, as you suggest, the meaning would 
change. Now the clause would mean:

   something which has

or

   something which has (him/her/it)

neither of which is right in this context.


Finally, my clause is part of a larger whole, i.e.

   [law'taH (vay' ghajbogh)]

Here the subject is {vay'} postmodified by {ghajbogh}. A possible source of 
confusion might be the fact that {vay'} also happens to be the object of the 
relative clause. We would end up with an equally confusing sentence if we 
decided to use Okrand's clause as part of a larger structure.

   [muSov (yaS qIppu'bogh)]
   [(Officer whom he/she) hit knows me]

or

   [law' (yaS qIppu'bogh)]
   [(Officers whom he/she hit) are numerous]

This last examples brings us to yet another confusing detail. Confronted 
with {law'} the reader may expect to find an explicitly plural noun. In my 
clause the only noun is {vay'}. Well, rightly or wrongly, I assume that 
though in English the word "something" does not have a plural form, its 
Klingon equivalent can be made plural. I do not, however, go as far as to 
actually put the plural ending {-mey} on {vay'}.

Well, I hope this lengthy explanation makes some sense.

'ISqu'

PS I realize that my clause, though probably correct, may not be the best 
way of expressing what I want to express.

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