tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jun 03 12:17:56 2009

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Re: chay' "Get out of the way!" ra'lu'?

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

Fiat Knox wrote:
> I also recall "pung ghap HoS," "Mercy or power," where "ghap" is
> "exclusive OR." Mercy and power are mutually incompatible, in this
> sense.
> 
> In my sentence, the sentence-joining "exclusive or" preposition
> "pagh" was required to convey that same sense of mutual exclusivity.
> One is either leading, or following me; one cannot just stand there
> and be in the speaker's way. Well, one could, if one were willing to
> enjoy getting swiftly knocked down.
> 
> To Terrans, this is an admonition not to dither: to Klingons, it
> would be an instruction to a younger, less experienced warrior as to
> essential etiquette. As well as a warning not to dither.

The objection wasn't to your choice of words, it was to your placement 
of the conjunctions.

Instead of

	<phrase> pagh <phrase> pagh <phrase>

the suggestion was to use

	<phrase>, <phrase>, pagh <phrase>

because we've seen things like this before.

However, I would call that a stylistic suggestion, not anything we know 
definitively about the grammar.

Note that in /pung ghap HoS/, /ghap/ is a NOUN conjunction, which 
usually goes at the end of the string of nouns, but in this case it is a 
fossilized expression that must be said ungrammatically. Grammatically 
it would be said /pung HoS ghap/, but that's not how the expression goes.

-- 
SuStel
Stardate 9423.1

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