tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Dec 23 08:58:00 2007

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Re: "to-be" + <<-bogh>>

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



ja' qa'vaj:

> ...
> 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".
> ...

It looks to me like your post is based on a flawed understanding of {- 
bogh} relative clauses in Klingon.  You consistently give English  
translations as "nonessential" phrases, which can be deleted from the  
sentence without losing the meaning.  But I'm pretty sure every  
example of Klingon relative clauses makes them "essential", where the  
clause serves to restrict a nonspecific noun to a particular group or  
individual.

Essential:  Buy the chair that I touched.  (My touch is important.  
Don't buy a chair that I did not touch.)

Nonessential:  Buy the chair, which I touched.  (My touch doesn't  
matter. Don't buy the table, which I might or might not have touched.)

The difference is in the punctuation, not merely in the choice of  
relative pronoun.

With this in mind, {chom ghaHbogh} would be translated as "He who is  
[a/the] bartender," which is exactly the same meaning as simply  
{chom} "bartender.

ja' Doq:

> 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.


I agree completely.  The only use of a similar construction I can  
remember seeing "in the wild" was sort of a fad a great many years  
ago.  People were applying a formulaic translation to an English  
phrase like "the restaurant in the city" to get {vengDaq 'oHbogh  
Qe''e'}.  I thought it was unnecessarily Klinglish then, and I still  
think so now.

ja'qa' qa'vaj:

> qaQochba' QIn ngeHpu'wI' jIHbogh jIH'e'.


chatlhvam vIpojlaH 'e' vInID.  vIpojlaHbe'.

Knowing what you tried to explain at first lets me tease out  
something like a meaning:  "Only *I*, the message senders who I am,  
obviously disagree you."  The errors are trivial, but they are too  
distracting for me to concentrate on the part you're apparently  
trying to use as an example.

I can render the sentence as {jIQoch QIn vIngeHbogh jIH} "I who send  
the message disagree."  But what other "I" is there?  I think a  
relative clause using a pronoun as a "to be" verb is superfluous to  
the point of causing confusion.

-- ghunchu'wI'





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