[895] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re[4]: tape (actually egh & chuq)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon May 17 14:07:58 1993
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Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: (Mark E. Shoulson) <shoulson@ctr.columbia.edu>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Mon, 17 May 93 09:23:54 -0400
In-Reply-To: Mark_Nudelman@go.com's message of 14 May 93 14:11 <9305142114.AA27
>From: Mark_Nudelman@go.com
>Date: 14 May 93 14:11
>Content-Length: 1151
>>> So let me verify that I understand the difference between
>>> -chuq and -'egh: qIpchuq implies that they are hitting each
>>> other (as was probably intended), and qIp'egh implies that a
>>> group of Klingons are standing around, each one hitting
>>> himself with his head? Dochvetlh vIlegh 'e' vItIv! :-)
>>No, I don't think it implies that at all. I think it is just as
>>ambiguous as the English: "They are hitting themselves." You could
>>certainly apply that to, say, a football team pairing off and
>>hitting each other during warmups.
(I think the above was said by Krankor)
I don't think that's a correct way to read the dictionary. If you read it
that way, you pretty much completely blur whatever putative distinction
between "-'egh" and "-chuq" there is. After all, if you say that a group
as a subject can hit each other and still use "-'egh", then when can you
*not* use "-'egh"? The whole point is that "-chuq" implies that those
individuals or groups of individuals that make up the (larger) group which
is the subject are performing the action on *each other*, and *not* each on
itself. Conversely, "-'egh" implies they *are* performing the action on
themselves.
Hmmm, I just thought of a case which may well disprove my above statement,
but should be interesting to consider. Consider a case wherein the
elements of the subject are themselves plural, e.g. "the teams"; each team
has more than one person. I can say "Suvchuq ghommey": "the teams are
fighting one another". So far, fine. What about if the members of each
team are fighting, that is, the teams are fighting, each within itself?
Would "Suv'egh ghommey" work for that? From one angle, yes, since each
team is fighting itself. But does that contradict what I just tried to say
in the preceding paragraph? Maybe. Since, after all, the individual team
members are actually fighting each other. Perhaps it is significant that
in the first case, the team-members are "first-order" constituents of the
subject (i.e. the subject is a group made of them directly), while in the
second case they are "second-order", in that the subject is a group of
groups of them.
Another thing to consider is the statement in 4.2.1 that "-chuq" is only
used with plural subjects. So maybe it's just plain wrong to say "Suvchuq
ghom" to mean "the team is fighting among itself/the team's members are
fighting one another", just as it would be in English to say "the team s
fighting each other." (aside, it still is correct to say "Suvchuq ghom",
since "ghom" can be taken to be plural, as plural-marking is optional in
Klingon. But that's another matter entirely).
I think I've managed to confuse this case rather nicely.
~mark
