tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jun 23 07:30:45 2004

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Re: mIvDaq yIH

QeS lagh ([email protected]) 

ghItlhpu' SuStel:

>Let's all play the Make Up Bogus Grammar To Justify Breaking the Rules 
>Game!

You're accusing me of doing a lot of things I really think I'm not doing; I 
take exception to that. If you could do it in a bit more constructive 
manner, it would be far more useful for my Klingon. If I wanted to break the 
rules, I wouldn't be bothering to learn Klingon; I would have taken TKD, 
added some of my own words, a few suffixes and ended up with something 
unspeakable. That's not why I'm here.

>*{mIvDaq yIH}is WRONG.  Why is everyone spending so much effort to find a
>magical way to justify it?  There's no missing elided verb, it's not two
>unrelated words, it's a blatant violation of a straightforward rule in TKD.

lay'tel SIvten asked for *a way* to interpret it, because it exists in canon 
(although it's an error), and I gave him one. I'm not saying that {mIvDaq 
yIH} is right. It's wrong. It's very wrong. I know that. TKD tells me that. 
You've told me that. I've accepted it, a lot longer ago than you seem to 
think. Remember, I was the one who wrote up the issue on the Wiki page more 
than a month ago:

/wiki/index.php?Common%20Grammar%20Questions%20And%20Problems

Read what I say there and you'll realise my stance on the issue. It's the 
same as yours. What I was doing with the elided verb business was trying to 
point out that I wouldn't see *{X-Daq Y} as a noun-noun construction, mainly 
BECAUSE that's illegal. Remember, also, that there are *two* ways to look at 
the question: from within the language and from outside it. I was answering 
in terms of the language internally: *in Klingon*, {mIvDaq yIH} sounds to me 
like it's a fragment - half a sentence - not anything sensible on its own. 
It sounds like there are words missing. If you came up to me and said, in 
English, "I saw the in the park today", I know generally what you might be 
talking about, but that doesn't make it grammatical. But you still know 
exactly what fits in the gap: that's what I was trying to say. You said 
exactly the same thing to me about {Dajatlhbogh vIyajbe'}.

>Everyone is always ready to recast a sentence to say it in Klingon - except
>if the original would lead to a Type 5 on the first noun of a noun-noun.
>Why does everyone want to find a sneaky way around this rule?  Listen up!
>Klingon is not English.  Just live with it.  It's not hard to deal with.
>What's so difficult about saying {mIv tuQbogh yIH}?

*Nothing*. Please don't be patronising, because it only gets both of us 
worked up. You've been very vocal on this point many times before. 
Nonetheless, this time I think it's unjustified, and if it isn't, please be 
more constructive. I'm giving a possible reason why *{mIvDaq yIH} might be 
WRONG, not a reason why it might be right. All I was saying was that a 
noun-noun construction MIGHT be *grammatically* {X-(null) Y}, because that 
gives us an idea on why we CAN'T use Type 5 suffixes on the first noun of 
such a construction: because there's one already there. It was a theory, 
nothing more, and one which lay'tel SIvten has already posted a good 
argument against.

Okay then, here are some recasts for *{telDaq wovmoHwI'mey}:

{tel wovmoHwI'mey}
{telDaq wovmoHwI'mey lutu'lu'bogh}
{tel wovmoHbogh janHommey}
{tel leghlaHbogh vay' janHommey}
{tel luleghlu'bogh wovmoHwI'mey}
{tel leghlaHmeH wovmoHwI'mey}
{tel wovmoHmeH janHommey}
{tel 'angmeH wovmoHwI'mey}

>"Two grammatically unlinked nouns that just happen to be next to each
>other"?  If they're grammatically unlinked, then {mIvDaq} isn't modifying
>{yIH}?  Oh yeah?

{mIvDaq yIH}, according to you, is ungrammatical. Therefore it's impossible 
for {mIvDaq} to be sensibly modifying {yIH}. If they appear in a sentence, 
then {mIvDaq} doesn't modify any noun *in particular* (it can modify either 
subject, object or just the verb itself); if they appear in a single noun 
phrase, it's ungrammatical, and you can't argue much that's sensible in 
terms of grammar from an ungrammatical example.

If we could have a more academic argument, I think we could get more out of 
all this. Slanging matches aren't constructive.

QeS lagh, Qay'pu'wI'

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