[87838] in tlhIngan-Hol
Philosophical plurals...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (qaS'ar lI')
Sun Feb 28 22:30:50 2010
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:28:13 -0600
From: "qaS'ar lI'" <kashar.li@gmail.com>
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
What plural does the word for "corpse" take? Is it *lompu'* or is it *lommey
* ? Given the Klingon love of combat and poetry, this subject must've come
up at some point. I ask partly from linguistic curiosity, and from a
philosophical standpoint.
Corpses are, in the context I'm curious about, objects that at one time
possessed the capacity for speech. In that instance, *-pu'* would seem to be
the most appropriate. However, since they cannot use language *now*, and
knowing that Klingon's treat the body as "an empty shell" when the spirit
passes from it (I believe I took that from the Klingon CD-ROM game), it
would seem to make *-mey* most appropriate. If that is the case, what is a
Klingon poet to do to differentiate "corpses" from "corpses scattered all
about", which is necessary to make any battle aftermath scene complete?
Inquisitive,
Mitchell
