tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jan 28 09:19:57 2004

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Re: taghwI' jIH

Scott Willis ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "chepqu'" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 9:32 AM
Subject: Re: taghwI' jIH

> chepqu' ne':
> > Hov ghajbe'bogh ram rur pegh ghajbe'bogh jaj!
>
> If I understand it well (I'm not sure), the part {pegh ghajbe'bogh
> jaj} translates to "a day which has no secret", but also can translate as
"a
> secret which has no day".

{jIQoch}. In the relative phrase "A day which has no secrets", the noun
doing the "have"'ing is "day", and as such comes after the verb. "A secret
which has no day" would only be {jaj ghajbe'bogh pegh}, where "secret" is
the subject.

{-bogh} does not change the word order of the clause. I, too, had difficulty
with this at first. It was my English getting in the way. In English, the
head noun of a relative clause comes first in the clause, regardless of
whether or not it's the actual subject of the clause:
"My brother whom I dislike."
"The woman who eats the fruit."
"The house cleaned by the man."
In each of the above sentences, the head noun (topic of conversation), is
marked by coming first in the clause. In Klingon, these clauses would be:
{loDnI' vIparbogh}
{naH Sopbogh be''e'}
{juH'e' Say'moHbogh loD}
Notice the use of {'e'} to explicitly indicate the head noun (which may or
may not be the subject of the clause.)

If you wanted to switch the emphasis in the last two sentences above, you
would change the position of {'e'}:
{naH'e' Sopbogh be'}
{juH Say'moHbogh loD'e'}
which would become "the fruit the woman eats", and "the man who cleans the
house.", resp.
The word order does not change in the Klingon because in all cases above, it
is the woman who is doing the eating, and the man is cleaning. They are
therefore the subjects of the relative clause, and go after the verb.

OTOH, when these phrases are put into a sentence, there could be some
ambiguity, if one does not use {'e'}:
{'ey naH Sopbogh be'}
In the sentence above, one is not really sure if it is the fruit or the
woman which is delicious.
{SuD juH Say'moHbogh loD}
Once again, there are more posibilities for confusion: Are we talking about
the house, or the man? Is the house green, or does the man gamble?

In English, the syntax removes most questions:
"The fruit the woman eats is delicious." No question there, we have "fruit"
at the fore of the clause, so we know that's what we're talking about.
"The man who cleans the house gambles." Since we know we are talking about a
man (indicated by the position of "man"), it is highly unlikely (though not
ungrammatical) that this man is green. Therefore, he probably gambles.

Use {'e'} to remove the ambiguity in Klingon:
{'ey naH'e' Sopbogh be'} "The fruit the woman eats is delicious."
{SuD juH Say'moHbogh loD'e'} "The man who cleans the house gambles."

Switch the {'e'}, change the meaning:
{'ey naH Sopbogh be''e'} "The woman who eats the fruit is delicious."
{SuD juH'e' Say'moHbogh loD} "The house cleaned by the man is green."

Is this the type of info you needed? If not, post, and I'll give another
shot, from a different angle. }}: )

--ngabwI'
Beginners' Grammarian,
Klingon Language Institute
http://kli.org/
HovpoH 701097.6

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