tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Dec 18 05:45:17 2007

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

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

Re: jIHtaHbogh naDev vISovbe'

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

ja' qa'vaj:

> Does "rejected by at least one of my peers" mean that the article  
> was not published in HolQeD?

Yes.  I could have trimmed the article to remove the unjustified  
extrapolations, but the fundamental complaint from one of the  
reviewers would have remained.  He (she?) did not accept the single  
example from TKD as an appropriate basis for understanding Klingon  
grammar.

> Take as given that <<jIHtaHbogh naDev vISovbe'>> isn't a mistake.

Of course.

> ...we know that <<naDev>> is the head noun of the relative clause.

Yes.

> The relative clause is <<jIHtaHbogh naDev>>.

Not quite.  I'm saying that the relative clause is {jIHtaHbogh}.  The  
head noun is *described* by the clause, but it is not required to be  
*part of* the clause.  This is an important point.

> As you further discuss with SuStel, the 'where' comes from the  
> locative sense of <<naDev>>.  It doesn't result in any automatic  
> way from <<-bogh>>.

That's his argument, not mine.  My argument is that the {-bogh}  
*does* let us translate the clause using "where".  TKD 6.2.3 tells us  
we can do that.  I'm suggesting that {maSoppu'bogh Qe'} is properly  
understood as "the restaurant where we ate".

> ...I think it may be useful to explicitly state our analysis method  
> here.  We want to construct a precursor standalone "to-be" sentence  
> using <<jIH>> and <<naDev>>.  Then from that, we intend to add <<- 
> bogh>> to the pronoun-as-verb.

That's not my method.  I'm deconstructing the phrase, not building it.

You're trying to start with a phrase that includes the head noun and  
then mark it as a relative clause.  That's the same path that keeps  
"the ship in which I fled" from being translated.  My analysis starts  
by noting that a relative clause *describes* its head noun in a way  
translated into English using a relative pronoun: who, that, which,  
where, etc.  It only *contains* the head noun when that noun is  
semantically part of the clause.

The rest of your analysis relies on the starting point of having the  
head noun as the relative clause's locative, it requires a lot of  
handwaving to explain the apparent shift in word order, and it seems  
to assume that the "where" idea comes from {-Daq} (either implied or  
explicit) rather than from the definition of a relative clause.  I  
thought my explanation had been clearer than that.

-- ghunchu'wI'

Back to archive top level