tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Dec 17 17:46:50 2007

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Re: jIHtaHbogh naDev vISovbe'

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

Alan Anderson wrote:
> ja' Doq:
> 
>> What we can't translate is "The torpedo hit the city where the captain
>> visited his brother." If we try, we get *{vengDaq loDnI'Daj Suchbogh
>> HoD qIp peng.}*
> 
> Using the understanding I have of how the "I'm lost" sentence works,  
> what I get is this:
> 
> {HoD loDnI' Suchpu'bogh HoD veng qIp peng}
> 
> It isn't very good, as there is no syntactic indication of where the  
> relative clause ends and what the head noun is.  Emphasis and/or  
> punctuation might help, or it might not:
> 
> {HoD loDnI' Suchpu'bogh HoD, veng qIp peng}

All I get out of that is a noun phrase dangling in the header with no 
indication as to its semantic relationship to the rest of the sentence. 
"The captain who has visited the captain's brother, the torpedo hit the 
city." Or "The captain's brother, whom the captain has visited, the 
torpedo hit the city." There's simply no "where" in there. When Okrand 
gives us {yaS qIppu'bogh puq} he never translates this as "where the 
child hit the officer."

If I said {HoD loDnI' Suchpu'bogh HoD vIlegh}, that means "I see the 
captain who has visited the captain's brother" or "I see the captain's 
brother, whom the captain has visited."

If you add some indication of the meaning to the relative clause to your 
main sentence, you suddenly get a perfectly reasonable sentence, though 
not one that means the same thing:

    HoD loDnI' Suchpu'bogh HoDvaD veng qIp peng
    The torpedo hit the city for the captain who has visited the
    captain's brother. (Whatever that means in context.)

SuStel
Stardate 7961.8

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