[118] in tlhIngan-Hol
Question about relative clauses
dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun Feb 16 15:24:04 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: gt5878b@cad.gatech.edu (Charles Edward Maise)
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 92 6:19:19 EST
I've found a situation that the dictionary doesn't cover (shock, amazement!).
See section 6.2.3, relative clauses.
Now then, "The officer whom she hit" is
yaS qIppu'bogh,
object precedes verb. Likewise, "The officer who hit her" is
qIppu'bogh yaS,
subject follows verb. Fine. What about "The officer who hit the prisoner?"
Since subject (officer) follows verb and object (prisoner) precedes verb,
then it should be
qama' qIppu'bogh yaS.
Seems correct, right? Okay, how about "The prisoner whom the officer hit?"
Well, the subject is the officer (doing the hitting) and the object is
the prisoner (being hit), so it should be
qama' qIppu'bogh yaS.
Uh-oh.
We can tell that the officer hit the prisoner. We can't tell if we are
interested in the officer or the prisoner!
qama' qIppu'bogh yaS vIHoHpu'.
What did I do? A) I killed the officer who hit the prisoner, or B) I killed
the prisoner whom the officer hit.
The book, as near as I can tell, does not address this ambiguity. I can
think of two possible solutions. One is that the "head noun," that is the
noun being modified by the relative clause, is marked with -'e' when there
is both a subject and an object in the relative clause. Thus:
qama''e' qIppu'bogh yaS vIHoHpu'.
I killed the prisoner whom the officer hit.
qama' qIppu'bogh yaS'e' vIHoHpu'.
I killed the officer who hit the prisoner.
The other approach is to assume that when the head noun is modified by
a relative clause that has both a subject and an object, the clause follows
the head noun, as adjectives follow nouns; the other noun is placed either
before or after the verb, depending on whether it is the subject or
the object of the relative clause:
qama' qIppu'bogh yaS vIHoHpu'.
I killed the prisoner whom the officer hit.
yaS qama' qIppu'bogh vIHoHpu'.
I killed the officer who hit the prisoner.
You could concoct other, similar rules that would specify one way or another.
Since the book doesn't say what to do for these, we're on our own. Does
anyone have some convincing arguments about how this should work?
Eddie Maise gt5878b@cad.gatech.edu qI' val vI'oghlaHbe'taH
