tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Sep 03 05:09:15 2010

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Re: gha'tlhIq

R Fenwick ([email protected])



ghItlhpu' mupwI':
>*tujbogh pem nI' po 'I'wIjDaq SuDqu'bogh DochHom'e' tlher vItu'bogh gha'tlhIq*

majQa'! Only one thing: drop the {-'e'} on {DochHom'e'}. It's problematic, since
in a noun-adjectival construction the type 5 suffix comes after the adjectival
(so it should be {DochHom tlher'e'}), but generally type 5 suffixes are also
forbidden on the first noun of a noun-noun construction as well, so {DochHom
tlher'e'... gha'tlhIq}} might well be illegal too. In poetry grammar's not as
rigid, though.

taH:
>I admit to being a little confused by the *poH tuj bI'reS* summer solstice 
>translation, as *bI'reS* is defined a the beginning/start of something. Guess 
>it's enshrined in canon now.

Though there's no citation, I noticed on the Wikipedia page "Summer solstice":
"It has recently become a popular belief in the United States that the
meteorological season of summer begins with the astronomical phenomenon of the
summer solstice." I don't know how true that is generally, but it might explain
the Klingon rendering here.

>As there are different rules as to what affixes you can use in the different
>nouns in a noun-noun construction, this may become relevant. I think the rule
>from TKD was that you can only add type 5 noun suffixes to the second noun. If
>you add more nouns, would that rule change to the last noun?

While I don't think canon's explicit on that, I believe so.

>Is a noun-noun-noun-noun construction possible?

Definitely. S14 has the four-noun phrase {HoS Hal qengwI' naQ tIq} "an extended
power supply stock".

>Can the type 5 noun suffix -Daq be used with temporal nouns as well as 
>spatial/locative? e.g. *poDaq* for in the morning. Or *pemDaq* in the daytime.
>Would it even be needed as the whole thing is a time/date-stamp?

Exactly. IIRC canon's never said whether {-Daq} can be used for a temporal
location (though in practice, no Klingon speaker I know uses it in that way),
but since you can use any suitable noun, unmodified, as a time stamp there's no
need for it anyway.

>Is something like the following possible?
>*poH tuj botlhDaq pem wa' po*

No, because that violates the rule about type 5 suffixes on the first noun of
a noun-noun construction.

QeS 'utlh
 		 	   		  





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