tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed May 20 13:54:55 2009
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RE: nuq bach?
Fiat Knox wrote:
>> nuq bachpu' puqloD - what did the boy shoot?
>> puqloD bachpu' nuq - what shot the boy?
SuStel:
>Just a minor digression. I believe KGT tells us that /bach/ takes the
>thing projected as its object:
>
> nISwI' HIch tIH bach yaS.
> The officer shoots the disruptor pistol beam.
>
>But because things like /tIH/ are so commonly shot, they are often
>dropped from the sentence, leaving the weapon which did the firing as
>the object of /bach/:
>
> nISwI' HIch bach yaS.
> The officer shoots the disruptor pistol.
KGT 56: The verb used for shoot when referring to disruptors is {bach}. Technically speaking, one shoots the energy beam from the disruptor. The general word for any energy beam ({ray}) is {tIH}, so a disruptor's beam is {nISwI' tIH}. Thus, the correct formation is {nISwI' tIH bach} ("shoot the disruptor beam"). As a practical matter, however, the {tIH} is often left out, and {nISwI' bach} is the common way to say "shoot a disruptor". Similarly, {pu' bach} is "shoot a phaser".
Example:
pe'vIl mu'qaDmey tIbach
Curse well! TKW
TKW 148: The commonly heard sendoff "Curse well!"--roughly comparable in usage to the Federation Standard "Good luck!"--literally means, "Shoot curses forcefully!" Curses are considered a weapon of a sort which must be propelled to their targets."
>If I am remembering this correctly, you cannot say */puqloD bachpu' nuq/
>"What shot the boy?" unless the answer were a trapeze cannon or the like.
>
>If this is correct, a sentence like "The officer shot the criminal" has
>to be said something like this:
>
> bach yaS; HeSwI' mup.
> The officer shot; he hit the criminal.
>
>(That's assuming I've got the right sense of /mup/ "impact, strike."
>pojwI' tells me that /qIp/ "hit" refers to hitting with a hand, fist, or
>implement.)
A simpler method is to "target" you victim with {-Daq}:
HeswI'Daq bach yaS.
The officer shot at the criminal.
To show he actually hits the criminal, you can add {-chu'}:
HeswI'Daq bachchu' yaS.
The officer shot the criminal.
This method was used by Okrand in the original version of the lines mixed up by Paramount in ST5:
logh veQDaq bachchugh, yoH 'e' toblaHbe' SuvwI'
Shooting space garbage is no test of a warrior's mettle. (ST5 notes)
--
Voragh
Canon Master of the Klingons