tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jul 12 09:34:21 2013

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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] "up to" or "as many as"

Rohan Fenwick ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

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<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'>ghItlhpu' loghaD, jatlh:<br>&gt; Also, {jav} after {DuHbe'bogh}.<br><div><br>I agree. If it's important to preserve the relative clause, {DuHbe'bogh jav qech} is better.<br><br>jang SuStel, jatlh:<br>&gt; No, I wouldn't do that. {DuHbe'bogh ghu'} is a more fundamental idea <br>&gt; than {jav ghu'} in this statement.<br>&gt; rut jav DuHbe'bogh qech vIHarpu' nIQ vISoppa'.<br><br>Though it violates no formal rules, {jav DuHbe'bogh qech} screams wrongness to me. If "impossible situation" is the most fundamental idea, why keep it pulled out into a relative clause, when the most compact and tightly-tied phrasal unit would be {ghu' DuHbe'}? At any rate, I can find no canon example for [N1 RelV N2] that parses as a noun-noun construction at all. Conversely, several examples exist of [RelV N1 N2], and these can equally happily be parsed either as [{RelV N1} N2] or [RelV {N1 N2}]:<br><br>Heghpu'bogh tlhIngan mInDu' "the eyes of the fallen Klingon" (S31)<br>Heghpu'bogh nuvpu' qa'pu' "the spirits of the dead" (paq'batlh: paq'raD 1.25)<br><br>but<br><br>yIntaHbogh tlhIngan Soj tlhol "raw Klingon food which is still alive" (S21) (not *"raw food of living Klingons")<br>joqtaHbogh molor tIqDu' "Molor's still-beating hearts" (paq'batlh: paq'raD 23.47) (not *"the hearts of the still-beating Molor")<br><br>loghaD:<br>&gt; I don't understand why you don't want the {jav} in the subject,<br>&gt; though. Is it because you feel that makes them be impossible only<br>&gt; when considered together?<br><br>SuStel:<br>&gt; Stylistic preference. It's the difference between "six impossible <br>&gt; things" and "an impossible six things."<br><br>I see that loghaD's willing to concede stylistic preference, but I don't think this is a mere difference of "style" as such; even in English, one is overwhelmingly usual and the other is very highly marked, almost to the point of being ungrammatical. The difference between {DuHbe'bogh jav qech} and {jav DuHbe'bogh qech} is that the former is fine, while the latter is also highly marked - indeed, it seems to be no more than an implicit theoretical possibility at this point. That there's no formal rule prohibiting it doesn't mean it can't still be weird and unidiomatic. Of course, if there *is* canon for the {jav DuHbe'bogh qech} pattern, I'm always happy to be proven wrong.<br><br>QeS<br></div> 		 	   		  </div></body>
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