tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Dec 22 20:12:05 2007
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Re: "to-be" + <<-bogh>>
I'm just not finding {<<pronoun>>-bogh} all that interesting. The
issue for me is that I don't see pronouns as taking a full set of verb
suffixes. There are quite a few that have either no functionality or
really weird, mysterious possibilities.
jIH'egh?
maHchuq?
ghaHbeH?
I prefer {HoD vImoj} to {HoD jIHchoH}.
ghaHHa'?
jIHlu'?
I see {ghaHbogh} as marginally meaningful, requiring really special
context that is so rare as to verge on poetry. I don't see prose
having much use for it in an average day. If I never see this
resolved, I doubt it will decrease the set of things I can express
comfortably in Klingon.
Just my opinion.
Doq
On Dec 22, 2007, at 7:22 PM, qa'vaj wrote:
> --
> The recent thread started from <<jIHtaHbogh naDev vISovb'e>>
> branched in two
> directions. One was a general discussion of relative clauses and the
> relative clause in Klingon. The other branch was related to the formal
> grammatical construction of a "to-be" sentence. Not discussed was
> specifically how <<-bogh>> works with "to-be". I think that there
> are some
> interesting issues related to the latter. (This is not about the
> word order
> in the canon sentence, nor "the ship in which I fled").
>
> First, start with some selected basic facts about <<-bogh>> clauses in
> non-"to-be" sentences:
>
> A) ambiguity.
>
> The way Klingon creates a relative clause has an inherent
> ambiguity. <<loD
> qIppu'bogh yaS>> can either mean "The officer who hit the man" or it
> could
> mean "The man who was hit by the officer."
>
> B) ambiguity resolved using 'e'
>
> Post TKD, we learned that the ambiguity can be resolved by marking the
> desired head noun with <<-'e'>>.
>
> C) no ambiguity with the implied pronoun
>
> <<qippu'bogh yaS>> means "The officer who hit him/her". It seldom
> if ever
> would mean "He/She who was hit by the officer". Presumably, the
> latter
> could be expressed with <<ghaH'e' qippu'bogh yaS>> or maybe <<ghaH
> qippu'bogh yaS>> since the presence of the pronoun itself stands
> out. There
> is one piece of cannon <<Dajatlhbogh vIyajbe'>> (or something like
> that)
> which suggests that sometimes the implied pronoun can be the head noun
> (perhaps when neither subject nor object noun is supplied).
>
> So now consider <<-bogh>> used in "to-be".
>
> 1)
>
> chom ghaHbogh.
>
> There are three possibilities.
>
> 1.a) The same ambiguity of A) applies. This could either mean "The
> bartender, who he/she is" or "He/she, who is the bartender".
>
> 1.b) The situation is more like C) above, in that the <<ghaH>> is just
> serving something like the implied pronoun, and thus there is no
> ambiguity,
> <<chom ghaHbogh>> would almost always mean "The bartender, who he/
> she is".
> IOW, <<chom>> would almost always be the head noun.
>
> 1.c) The situation is unique for "to-be", and the <<-bogh>> extends
> the
> semantics of the <<-bogh>>-less sentence. <<chom ghaH>> "he is the
> bartender", <<chom ghaHbogh>> "he, who is the bartender". IOW,
> <<ghaH>>
> would almost always be the head 'noun', even though the <<-bogh>> is
> stuck
> to it by convention.
>
> if 1.b) is true, then what would be the way to force "he/she, who is
> the
> bartender"? Possibly <<chom ghaHbogh ghaH'e>>?
>
> if 1.a) is true, then <<chom ghaHbogh ghaH'e'>> would force one
> interpretation. How would the other be forced? <<chom'e' ghaHbogh>>
> possibly, even though that looks like weird word order. Also, as I
> mentioned in the other thread <<ghaHbogh chom>> might work, because
> of the
> marked word order.
>
> if 1.c) is true, then it's a lot like 1.a) except that <<chom ghaHbogh
> ghaH'e'>> would not be required. In this case the <<jIHtaHbogh naDev
> vISovbe'>> canon might be used to justify the pairing <<chom
> ghaHbogh>>
> "he/she who is the bartender" and <<ghaHbogh chom>> "the bartender who
> he/she is".
>
>
> 2)
>
> chom ghaHbogh HoD'e'.
>
> At first blush, it seems that the ambiguity of A) should be present.
> But the
> rule in B) sort of conflicts with the <<-'e'>>'s usual usage in the
> "to-be"
> construction. Or does it?
>
> If we always interpreted <<chom ghaHbogh HoD'e'>> as "the captain,
> who is
> the bartender", then we could probably always use <<HoD ghaHbogh
> chom'e'>>
> as "the bartender, who is the captain." Does this run into
> problems? I
> don't see any offhand. The head noun would always be after the
> pronoun-as-verb when two nouns are present. That would have a nice
> symmetry
> if 1.c) above were the way things worked.
>
> 3)
>
> Since the relative clause plus head noun is used as a unit as a noun,
> presumably the prefix agreement would work as follows:
> {assume 1.b) }
>
> jIDun chom jIHbogh jIH'e'
> "I, who am the bartender, am wonderful"
>
> Dun chom jIHbogh
> "The bartender, who is me, is wonderful"
>
>
>
>
> --
> qa'vaj
> qo'lIj DachenmoHtaH
>
>
>