tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Sep 29 06:17:44 2007

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Re: grammar question: verbs used adjectivally

QeS 'utlh ([email protected])



ghItlhpu' SuStel, ja':
>... I've just skimmed through The Klingon Way and found the
>following:
>     meQtaHbogh qachDaq Suv qoH neH
>     Only a fool fights in a burning house. (p. 111)

You beat me to it. :)
 
ghItlhpu' mI'qey, ja':
>I just had another thought:  would this work if {qach} were
>not the subject of the subordinate verb but its object?  E.g.:
>     *{qachDaq meQmoHlu'pu'bogh Suv qoH neH} ?

Ambiguity could obviously be a problem. However, assuming that relative clauses without a noun as the head are generally frowned upon in Klingon (which IIRC seems to be the majority opinion despite the KCD counterexample {Dajatlhbogh vIyajbe'} - someone correct me if I'm wrong), interpreting {qachDaq} as part of the main clause leaves {meQmoHlu'pu'bogh}, which lacks a noun as its subject, stranded and without an explicit head. Of course, if the KCD specimen leads you to believe that headless relatives are generally legal, then this argument becomes invalid, and the ambiguity stretches to all instances of this construction.

Nevertheless, I see no reason why your example (with the intended meaning "only a fool fights in a building which someone has caused to burn") should be ungrammatical. IMHO the problem is that it's ambiguous, not that it's wrong.

>I worry that the {Daq} looks misplaced here (it really seems
>as if it belongs to the whole noun phrase {qach
>meQmoHlu'pu'boch}.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this. Do you mean that you think that instead of acting as the direct object of {meQmoHlu'pu'bogh}, {qachDaq} looks like just a bog-standard header for that verb?

QeS 'utlh
tlhIngan Hol yejHaD pab po'wI' / Grammarian of the Klingon Language Institute


not nItoj Hemey ngo' juppu' ngo' je
(Old roads and old friends will never deceive you)
- Ubykh Hol vIttlhegh

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