[89666] in tlhIngan-Hol
RE: 'oghwI' lut
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven Boozer)
Tue Sep 13 14:30:55 2011
From: Steven Boozer <sboozer@uchicago.edu>
To: "tlhingan-hol@kli.org" <tlhingan-hol@kli.org>
Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2011 13:22:50 -0500
In-Reply-To: <CAFK8js0LJ8h_tL3Q30wcs9CeAPaNtM9uOLv0B=79PONoe6XQkQ@mail.gmail.com>
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
André Müller:
>> I always had issues with the word qorDu' (family). Is it grammatically
>> singular or plural? Is it regarded as "capable of using speech" or not?
>> I just found we have a sentence:
>>
>> qaStaHvIS wa'maH puq poHmey, wo'rIv betleH ghaj qorDu'Daj.
>> Worf's bat'leth has been in his family for ten generations.
>>
>> So qorDu' seems to act as a singular noun in syntax, otherwise it'd have to
>> have been lughaj.
ghunchu'wI':
> Right. In Klingon, a collective noun like "group" is grammatically
> singular. This differs from what I think of as British usage, where
> one hears things like "the team are excited."
Presumably {qorDu'} works like {tuq}:
pInaDqu' tuqlIj wInaDqu' je
("We praise you highly; we also praise your house highly")
Glory to you and your house. KGT
If {tuq} were grammatically plural, the prefix would be {DI-} "we [do something] to them".
>> But would it be qorDu'wI' or qorDu'wIj, I wonder...
>
> I stand firmly in the {-wIj} camp. Though its members speak, the
> family itself does not.
Again, like {tuq} -- {tuqlIj} not *{tuqlI'}:
pInaDqu' tuqlIj wInaDqu' je. KGT
Presumably one can refer to *{qorDu'mey} and *{tuqmey}. Although we have no examples of either form, Okrand routinely speaks of "houses" in his discussion of {tuq} in KGT (pp. 36-38). Do we have any examples of a grammatically singular group noun with a plural suffix (houses, armies, crews, etc.) in Klingon? I can't think of any offhand.
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons
