[1425] in tlhIngan-Hol
relative clauses?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon Aug 23 00:01:18 1993
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy)
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1993 10:33:53 +1000 (EST)
My mailbox suddenly bursts at the seams with belated Klingon list
mail, but nothing to do with my question on relative clauses, so
here again (starting from scratch, I was silly enough not to
save it).
Take these examples of main and relative clauses from the Klingon
Dictionary, p.64:
qIppu'bogh yaS vIlegh I see the officer who hit him/her
yaS qIppu'bogh vIlegh I see the officer whom he hit
How shall I say "I see the child who hit the officer"?
To quote: "The whole construction (relative clause plus head noun),
as a unit, is use in a sentence as a noun".
So: qIppu' yaS the officer hit him
+bogh: qIppu'bogh yas *the officer who* hit him
yaS qIppu' he hit the officer
+bogh: yaS qIppu'bogh *the officer whom* he hit
Now:
yaS qIppu' puq the child hit the officer
+bogh yaS qIppu'bogh puq ? the child who hit the officer
? the officer whom the child hit
My knee-jerk reaction is to say (in Klingon): "the child hit the
officer, I see the/that child", i.e.:
yaS qIppu' puq, puq<*> vIlegh
But,
1. I am not clear at all about what to use for the/that (my <*>):
zero, -vam, -vetlh, something else?
2. I have a gut feeling that the two clauses are crying out for a
coordinating conjunction, but I see no trace of such a conjunction
in the grammar part of the Klingon Dictionary
3. Those two clauses, lacking a coordinating conjuction, feels a two
independent clauses, so that
yaS qIppu' puq, puq<*> vIlegh
puq vIlegh, yaS qIppu' puq<*>
feel equally permissible to me. I still feel a difference in meaning:
in the second one, "yaS qIppu' pug<*>" feels like... and afterthought.
I will stop there, because further discussion would continue leading
into a maze of ungrounded hypotheses.
Only one more course of food for thought: how does one say "the torpedo
with which we destroyed the spaceship"? I boils down to the same
problem, doesn't it?
