tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Dec 15 20:02:39 2007

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Re: jIHtaHbogh naDev vISovbe'

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

QeS 'utlh wrote:
> ghItlhpu' SuStel, ja':
> You've outlined a good argument here, so I won't requote it in detail
> (otherwise I'll be here all week!). I just have a problem with using
> {SoH 'Iv} as evidence for an anomalous word order here.

I didn't cite it as evidence. I said my analysis could explain {SoH 'Iv}.

> I see no problem with {SoH 'Iv} for the same reason as I see no
> problem with {yIH nuq} "what is a tribble?". Okrand provided that
> example in a post to the MSN newsgroup that "[q]uestion words (in this
> case, nuq "what?") function the same way pronouns do in questions
> with "to be" in the English translations" (MSN posting 12-12-1996). In this
> case, the way I interpret it is that it isn't {SoH} that is acting as the
> pronoun; it's {'Iv}.

Sure, that works too. Ultimately, I don't think it matters. I think 
maybe even the Klingons don't know which one it is.

> Going back to the original thought, I've since had the idea that maybe
> {naDev} could be shifted as an intentional ungrammaticality in order to
> emphasise {naDev} ("I don't know HERE, I don't know THIS place where
> I am"). Since we have an example of an adverbial shifted to post-object
> position, also maybe for emphasis ({'e' reH lunIDtaH} "they always keep
> trying that" from S26, where an emphatic reading is also supported by
> the illegal {-taH} on a verb following {'e'}), perhaps such shifting
> sometimes happens for time and location stamps as well - which, for all
> intents and purposes, function essentially as adverbs do anyway.

Certainly possible. As I indicated in my original analysis, I did *not* 
have any convincing reason for this.

I'll tell you what I *really* think happened here: relative clauses with 
a subject are, I think, more common than with an object, and Okrand put 
{jIHtaHbogh} before the "subject" as is more common. Newbies do this all 
the time (and he certainly was a newbie when he wrote the dictionary!).

> That's just an alternative analysis, and it might not be right; your
> explanation works just as well. Further, yours might explain why {-'e'}
> must, in {ta' Hol} at least, appear on the subject of a copulative
> construction when there's an explicit subject present.

Note that in my terminology, the final noun of a copula is *not* a 
subject; it is only a topic. The copula has a syntax all its own that is 
not Object-Verb-Subject; it is Copulative-Pronoun-Topic.

Yes, I know Okrand calls it a subject in TKD. He misnames a lot of 
things in the dictionary, and the grammar presented is primitive. All 
subtleties are not accounted for.

SuStel
Stardate 7956.6

-- 
Practice the Klingon language on the tlhIngan Hol MUSH.
http://trimboli.name/klingon/mush.html

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