tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Sep 14 11:47:41 2007

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Re: Positioning for emphasis

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

Steven Boozer wrote:

> As for Philip's example of "As for the child, (it) hit the officer", the 
> only way to grammatically translate this is {yaS qIp puq'e'}.  Although the 
> subject can be fronted in English, it can't in Klingon; it can only be 
> tagged with the topic suffix {-'e}:

It's true that we've never seen the subject "fronted," but that doesn't 
make it ungrammatical. The grammar seems quite obvious:

	puq'e' yaS qIp [ghaH]
	As for the child (topic), (he)(subject) hit (verb) the officer
	(object).

This follows the general Klingon pattern of HOVS (H = "header"). Two 
other sentences of this pattern might be:

	DaHjaj yaS qIp ghaH
	He hit the officer today.

	DujDaq yaS qIp ghaH
	He hit the officer (while he was) on the ship.

> According to our current knowledge of colloquial Klingon, ?{puq'e' yaS qIp} 
> would most likely be understood as "S/he hit the CHILD's officer, It was 
> the child's officer whom s/he hit" (i.e. not some other officer).

That interpretation is not grammatical. It violates the rule that says a 
Type 5 noun suffix cannot appear on the first noun in a noun-noun 
construction. The only way you could emphasize {puq} in the noun phrase 
{puq yaS} "child's officer" is with intonation or the like.

(Likewise, my previous sentence {DujDaq yaS qIp ghaH} cannot mean that 
he hit an "on-the-ship-officer.")

SuStel
Stardate 7703.7

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