tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jul 12 23:46:57 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' ghunchu'wI', jatlh:<br>&gt; For what it's worth, I prefer {jav DuHbe'bogh Doch} over {DuHbe'bogh<br>&gt; jav Doch} here. I see nothing wrong or even unusual with putting a<br>&gt; relative clause in the second noun of a noun-noun phrase.<br><br>As I said previously, it's true that there is no formal rule prohibiting it, but purely from a canon standpoint I still argue that idiomatic Klingon probably avoids constructing noun-noun constructions of this form if at all possible. Having had the chance to look a little more thoroughly, I've located two more clear examples to add to the two I posted yesterday, and consequently I'm even more convinced that stylistic preference is not a strong enough argument to ignore canon here:<br><br>yIntaHbogh tlhIngan Soj tlhol<br>"raw Klingon food which is still alive" (S21)<br>(not *"living Klingons' raw food")<br><br>joqtaHbogh molor tIqDu'<br>"Molor's still-beating hearts" (paq'batlh: paq'raD 23.47)<br>(not *"the hearts of the still-beating Molor")<br><br>pubtaHbogh ghargh HIq vItlhutlh<br>"I will drink boiling wormwine" (PK)<br>(not *"I will drink boiling-worm wine")<br><br>yuQDaq ghaHtaHbogh Hoch tlhIngan'e'<br>"each Klingon on the planet" (paq'batlh: paq'QIH 3.32)<br>(not *"the Klingons of each [person] who is on the planet")<br><br>I could find only a single possible counterexample, and even that's highly ambiguous:<br><br>molor chalqach 'avlu'bogh pIrmuS lupawta'<br>"they reach the base of Molor's guarded tower" (paq'batlh: paq'raD 18.13-14)<br><br>{molor chalqach 'avlu'bogh} could indeed be a genuine noun-noun construction with a relative 
clause as the second noun phrase - the English gloss would indicate [N1 molor N2 [RelP chalqach 'avlu'bogh]], "Molor's tower which is guarded" - but since the translation is a free one, it could be just a bog-standard 
relative clause with a noun-noun construction as its grammatical object: an underlying structure of [RelP [N1 molor N2 chalqach] 'avlu'bogh] "the tower of Molor, which is guarded" is equally possible.<br><br><div>&gt; As for the original question, I don't think the general case is important enough<br>&gt; to need a general solution. Usually I think I would just leave out the idea.<br><br>Agreed.<br><br>QeS<br></div> 		 	   		  </div></body>
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