tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Dec 02 16:00:31 2009

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Re: Cogito ergo sum (was RE: Numbers with pronouns)

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

Christopher Doty wrote:
> Ah, I see what you're saying.  "Hoch nuH qel" is a sort of basic form
> of an utterance, without the verbal morphology?  (I got my copy of KGT
> today; can you point me to the section with these?)

The idioms start on page 108, but you'll find this sort of thing 
throughout the book.

> Normally in linguistics when the form that appears in a dictionary is
> either a) ungrammatical on its own or b) a form selected for
> simplicity, we call it the "citation form."  In Arabic, for example,
> the 3rd singular masculine conjugation form, as it is the easiest to
> use as the basis to form the other conjugations (and there is no
> infinitive form).  Is this what you mean here?

Yes, that's exactly it.

> On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 15:42, David Trimboli <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Christopher Doty wrote:
>>> On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 15:08, David Trimboli <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> These aren't complete sentences; they're not-yet-used examples.
>>>>
>>>> I'm home now, so I can find a good one in KGT:
>>>>
>>>>    Hoch nuH qel ("consider every weapon")
>>>>
>>>>    This is an idiom cloaked in the terminology of the military that has
>>>>    a wider application. It is used to mean "Consider every possibility"
>>>>    or "Consider every option," with the word {nuH} ("weapon") standing
>>>>    metaphorically for "possibility." ({Hoch} means "all, every" and
>>>>    {qel} is "consider, take into account.") It is not a set phrase, so
>>>>    it is heard in various forms, such as a command ({Hoch nuH
>>>>    yIqel!}—literally, "Consider every weapon!" but meaning "Consider
>>>>    every possibility!"), question ({Hoch nuH Daqel'a'?} ["Did you
>>>>    consider every weapon?"]), or statement ({Hoch nuH wIqelpu'} ["We've
>>>>    considered every weapon"]), and it can be negated ({Hoch nuH qelbe'}
>>>>    ["He/she does not consider every weapon"]). The regular word for
>>>>    "possibility" is {DuH}, and, grammatically, there is no reason it
>>>>    could not occur instead of {nuH} in these sentences ({Hoch DuH yIqel}
>>>>    ["Consider every possibility!"] is a perfectly well formed sentence),
>>>>    but this is simply not the normal way to express the advice. The use
>>>>    of {nuH} "weapon" for {DuH} ("possibility") may have been influenced
>>>>    by the Krotmag dialect pronunciation of {DuH} as something very close
>>>>    to {nuH}...
>>>>
>>>> You can't use these phrases in sentences, but it shows how Okrand (and
>>>> maybe Klingons) think of these phrases without regard to person or mood.
>>> This looks very much like clipped Klingon to me, with the imperative
>>> prefix left off, similar to what we are talking about below,
>>> perhaps...
>> Clipped? No, I don't think so. If it were clipped it would still
>> "resolve" to just one meaning. The examples like this are meant to be
>> changed into any allowed form, not used as they are.
>>
>> Instead of infinitive, this could be called a "stem form." The verbs are
>> only stems, not inflected, just like the word-list entries in TKD. I
>> don't know if there is a linguistic term for phrases and sentences in
>> this form.

-- 
SuStel
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http://trimboli.name/mush

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