[89670] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: 'oghwI' lut
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robyn Stewart)
Tue Sep 13 15:38:04 2011
Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:30:58 -0700
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
From: Robyn Stewart <robyn@flyingstart.ca>
In-Reply-To: <BLU0-SMTP209AB19A1F5611CEE02205CD2050@phx.gbl>
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
>I cannot see {qurDu'} being anything but singular; in other words
>referring to the whole. Likewise, I would pluralize it with {-pu'}, as
>all members are (presumably) capable of speech.
>qorDu', don't write like I talk (inside joke: Canadian accent).
Members being capable of speech doesn't cut it. This is about
grammar, not logic. Just as mouth speaks, but is nujwIj, a family
itself is not a being capable of speech, so it is qorDu'wIj. Look at
Voragh's tuq example. I'm close to certain that qorDu' is
grammatically singular and grammatically not a being capable of speech.
qorDu'pu' would be a group of some kind of weird Doctor Who alien
that combined all members of a family into one entity.
I remember speculation maybe sixteen years ago when I was first
starting to memorize the vocabulary, that once upon a time -Du' meant
"pair" --hence its use for body parts, which generally come in
pairs--and that the concept of a family originated with scavenging
pairs of mated proto-Klingons.
> So too with {tuq}.
>{no'} we know to be grammatically singular, but I don't think {-pu'} can
>be used.
no' is an irregular plural, so right, no -pu'. But if it weren't, I
think you could would form the plural of *qempa' in -pu'.
>~quljIb
