tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Dec 06 08:33:17 2007

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



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

Re: Basic grammar question

Steven Boozer ([email protected])



Voragh:
> > Looking elsewhere, I found three different methods for handling
> > multiple nouns with other Type 5 (syntactic marker) noun suffixes:
> >
> >   [....]
> >   juHqo' Qo'noSvo' loghDaq lengtaHvIS tlhInganpu'
> >   During the (aggressive) expansion of the Klingon people
> >   from their homeworld of Kronos into space...  SP1
> >
> > {juHqo' Qo'noSvo'} "from the homeworld QonoS" = apposition with one
> > suffix on the second noun

Sustel:
>nouns. However, canonical evidence would suggest that the nouns need to
>be part of the same semantic class â?" beneficiaries are conjoined with
>beneficiaries, locations are conjoined with locations, but locations are
>not conjoined with places you're going away from (and so on).

ghunchu'wI':
>>There's also the {tIngvo' 'evDaq chanDaq} idiom, with no
>>conjunction.  The words are simply placed in sequence, implying
>>a sequence of motion.

I wouldn't really have expected a conjunction.  They are both just more 
complicated versions of the multiple place stamp we've seen in:

   naDevvo' vaS'a'Daq majaHlaH'a'
   Can we get to the Great Hall from here? PK

In fact, it used to be even more complicated:  {tIngvo' 'evDaq 'evvo' 
chanDaq}.  Okrand discussed the idiom on startrek.klingon (21 Nov. 1999):

   There is an idiomatic expression still heard with reasonable frequency
   which makes use of all three cardinal direction terms: {tIngvo' 'evDaq
   chanDaq}. Literally, this means "from area-southwestward to area-north-
   westward to area eastward", but the idiom means "all around, all over,
   all over the place". It is used in the same place in a sentence that
   the noun {Dat} "everywhere" might be used, but it is much more emphatic:
   {tIngvo' 'evDaq chanDaq jIlengpu'} "I've traveled all over the place."
   A more archaic form of the idiom is {tIngvo' 'evDaq 'evvo' chanDaq}
   (literally, "from area-southwestward to area-northwestward, from area-
   northwestward to area eastward"), but the three-word version (without
   the repetition of {'ev}) has all but totally replaced it.




--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons






Back to archive top level