[85694] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: chay' "Get out of the way!" ra'lu'?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Trimboli)
Wed Jun 3 15:18:34 2009
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:14:40 -0400
From: David Trimboli <david@trimboli.name>
In-reply-to: <811211.68580.qm@web24002.mail.ird.yahoo.com>
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Fiat Knox wrote:
> I also recall "pung ghap HoS," "Mercy or power," where "ghap" is
> "exclusive OR." Mercy and power are mutually incompatible, in this
> sense.
>
> In my sentence, the sentence-joining "exclusive or" preposition
> "pagh" was required to convey that same sense of mutual exclusivity.
> One is either leading, or following me; one cannot just stand there
> and be in the speaker's way. Well, one could, if one were willing to
> enjoy getting swiftly knocked down.
>
> To Terrans, this is an admonition not to dither: to Klingons, it
> would be an instruction to a younger, less experienced warrior as to
> essential etiquette. As well as a warning not to dither.
The objection wasn't to your choice of words, it was to your placement
of the conjunctions.
Instead of
<phrase> pagh <phrase> pagh <phrase>
the suggestion was to use
<phrase>, <phrase>, pagh <phrase>
because we've seen things like this before.
However, I would call that a stylistic suggestion, not anything we know
definitively about the grammar.
Note that in /pung ghap HoS/, /ghap/ is a NOUN conjunction, which
usually goes at the end of the string of nouns, but in this case it is a
fossilized expression that must be said ungrammatically. Grammatically
it would be said /pung HoS ghap/, but that's not how the expression goes.
--
SuStel
Stardate 9423.1
