tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Dec 15 20:39:09 2007

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Re: jIHtaHbogh naDev vISovbe'

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

QeS 'utlh wrote:
> ghItlhpu' qa'vaj, ja':
>> (As we all know), the location of <> in the sentence is 
>> syntactically consistent with two possibile roles.  One is that it
>> is a locative in the header slot, the other is that it is the
>> object of the copula (using the terms that you have offered).
> 
> Or (and this is where it can mess with your head a little) it might
> be both.

Welllll... not exactly. I believe a noun is either a header or it is an
object. Either way there is no restriction about using any type 5
suffixes on it and, given the proper sentence, there may be no
difference in meaning.

> Recall that per the interview with Okrand in HolQeD 7.4, {-Daq} can 
> mark the direct object of some verbs of motion even when the verb 
> itself contains the idea of motion to a location. {bIQtIqDaq vIjaH} 
> means "I go to the river", but although the {-Daq} indicates that 
> {bIQtIq} is some sort of locative header, the verb still carries 
> agreement for it, indicating that the relationship is somewhat closer
>  than the relationship between a normal header and the verb it
> modifies.

No. In {bIQtIqDaq vIjaH}, {bIQtIqDaq} is the object of {vIjaH}. It is
definitely not a header. (Unless you wanted to say {bIQtIqDaq 'oH vIjaH}
"I go to it on the river.") "Locative" is simply a meaning carried by
the noun with its suffix; it does not have any adverb-like quality that
would qualify it as a header.

> The problem is that we can't know for certain whether this is the
> case with the locative forms of what SuStel calls copulatives,
> because verb agreement for the object doesn't surface on
> pronouns-as-verbs. But it's possible that {pa'Daq} in {pa'Daq ghaHtaH
> HoD'e'} might behave in the same way as {bIQtIqDaq} does in
> {bIQtIqDaq vIjaH}, with the link between it and the verb it modifies
> being somewhat closer than your ordinary, run-of-the-mill locative
> header.

Except for your use of the term "header," this is exactly right. Having 
a locative suffix does not disqualify a noun from being an object, and 
in my analysis it does not disqualify a noun from being a "copulative." 
(I really want to find a better name for that!)

> taH:
>> On the other hand, If the intended meaning is "The captain is the 
>> room location", then <> can be viewed as the object of the copula: 
>> pa'Daq ghaHtaH HoD'e' "The captain is the room location".
> 
> Wouldn't it make more sense to invert it and say {HoD Daq 'oHtaH 
> pa''e'} "the room is the captain's location"? (And {pa'Daq} means "in
>  the room" and I believe would almost always be interpreted as such. 
> This is one reason why I avoid coining new compound nouns and stick 
> to the noun-noun construction.)

{pa'Daq} certainly must mean "in the room." {pa' Daq} is "the room's 
location."

If for some strange reason you wanted to say "The captain is this 
location" (without the "in," the room and the captain are one and the 
same) and you didn't want to use {Daq} "location," you *could* say 
{naDev ghaHtaH HoD'e'}. This would be misunderstood by Klingons in 
exactly the same way that the English translation "The captain is here" 
would be misunderstood. So I see no problem with any kind of ambiguity 
associated with trying to reference {naDev} in a non-locative kind of way.

SuStel
Stardate 7956.7

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

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