tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jan 22 19:13:48 2006

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RE: yopwaH

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

All this confusion about the plural "pants"... this confusion confuses me.
I've never had a problem with it.
Long long ago my ancestors wore a simple loincloth held in place by a rope
or belt-like strap.  Well, sometimes bare legs would be a bit uncomfortable;
cold, bugs, rough brush treking through the woods, etc.  So they made
leggings/pants, one for each leg and attached them to that rope/belt.  Two
individual pants, separate from eachother.  For some of MY ancestors this
was only a few hundred years ago.  Eventually the two pants were attached to
the loincloth and evolved into what we know of today.

This might not be true for everybody and their ancestry, but it applies to
many.

We just need to investigate about the history of KLINGON clothing and its
connection with the evolution of the klingon language.

In the meantime, 
If yopwaH is singular, it would be, well, grammatically singular.
If yopwaH is plural, it would still be grammatically singular.


DloraH



> ghItlhpu' Shane MiQogh, ja':
> >They are either plural or singular for a reson.
> 
> As I said, if you can tell us what that reason is, then we 
> *might* (but 
> then, we might not) have a basis for saying that {yopwaH} is plural.
> 
> >If a *PAIR* of pants were a singular entity, then so would 
> the klingon 
> >version.
> 
> Again, Klingon is not a code for English, so there's no 
> reason why the 
> grammar of Klingon words needs to map to that of English 
> words. A pair of 
> pants *is* a singular entity. I don't think anyone would 
> argue that a pair 
> of pants is actually somehow two articles of clothing.
> 
> >It's hard to explain this, but... While looking it up, i 
> realize that some 
> >other languages have it as "pant",
> 
> Most others, in fact. The other languages I can think of the 
> word "pants" in 
> (French, Turkish and Ubykh) all treat it as grammatically singular.
> 
> ...
> >So, really, we would have to talk about okrand about this, 
> cause he's the 
> >one that made the word, and only he can tell us weather it's 
> plural or 
> >singular
> >in klingon.
> 
> That's true, but in the meantime we can make a reasonable 
> guess based upon 
> Klingon canon (which is what we often must do in the absence 
> of any other 
> evidence). In Klingon, there's not one attested instance of a 
> noun that is 
> treated as grammatically plural although it's semantically 
> singular. In 
> fact, the opposite situation is the one we find: semantically 
> plural nouns 
> such as {ngop} "plates" are treated as grammatically 
> singular, not plural. 
> For this reason, I still think that {yopwaH} is not a 
> grammatically (or 
> semantically) plural noun, and that {yopwaHDaj 'oH 
> yopwaHvam'e'} "these 
> pants are his pants" is the correct form, not *{yopwaHDaj bIH 
> yopwaHvam'e'}.
> 
> QeS 'utlh
> tlhIngan Hol yejHaD pabpo' / Grammarian of the Klingon 
> Language Institute
> 
> 
> not nItoj Hemey ngo' juppu' ngo' je
> (Old roads and old friends will never deceive you)
>      - Ubykh Hol vIttlhegh
>

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