[Tlhingan-hol] paq'batlh no'Hol: QIch wabmey

[Rohan Fenwick - QeS 'utlh]

ghItlhpu' 'ISqu', jatlh:
> QeS will doubtless correct me if I'm wrong or if I have omitted something.
 
chaq pIm vuDmeymaj 'ach lughchu' wa' 'e' vImaqQo'. vuDlIj'e' vIvuvchu'.

I concur with most of what you've said, at any rate. pat Dangu'ta'bogh
vIparHa'qu'!

taH:
> There may have been more long vowels and more diphthongs but they are not
> attested in the Prologue.
 
Indeed; for that matter there might be more consonants too. A problem with
analysing such a small corpus. :)

> (BTW I created a pdf file with a chart indicating the direction of
> the vowel shift.
(poD)
> Obviously, the positions of the {no' Hol} vowels in the chart are
> speculative. I'm not even sure if I got the {ta' Hol} vowels right. If
> you think something needs changing, please, let me know.)
 
Klingon /e/ should be a small epsilon, but otherwise I agree completely.
(One of the awesome things about the paq'batlh is the published canon
chart of IPA equivalents.)
 
> 6. [u] underwent elision after [sr]:
> [*u]>[0], as in {*bosru}>{baS}, {*-nesru}>{-nIS}
 
To elaborate, I don't think this is an */u/-specific phenomenon. */i/ was
also elided after */s/ in *syisi and after */D/ in *-tyeDi and *-DoDi, so
I think this reflects a more generalised loss of syllable-final vowels,
which might explain their rarity in the vocab in general.

As an aside, I've long suspected that "Proto-Klingon" - the phase of the
language before no' Hol - had many more CV syllables, including roots. We
have lots of words with related meanings that share CV- initials, and I've
wondered whether these might have come from old *CV-CV compounds. Some
examples are:
 
bach "to shoot", baH "to fire"
Daj "be interesting", Dal "be boring" (a compound with Da "behave as"?)
-moH "to cause", -mo' "because (of)"
nga'chuq "have sex", ngagh "mate with"
ngeH "send", ngev "sell", nge' "take away"
po "morning", pov "afternoon", poH "period of time"
poch "to plant", por "leaf"
pom "dysentery", poQ "indigestion" (cf. porgh "body"?)
qem "bring", qeng "carry, convey"
quH "heritage", qun "history", qup "elder"
Qap "succeed", Qat "be popular", QaQ "be good" (reduplication?)
QID "wound", QIH "damage"
QoQ "music", Qoy "hear"
Qoch "disagree", Qo' "interjection of refusal", Qor "have a minor fight",
   Qoj "wage war"
Qong "sleep", Qop "be worn out", Qot "lie, recline"
Soj "food", Sop "eat"
'agh "show, demonstrate", 'ang "show, reveal"
 
and of course, our favourite set: jatlh, jach, jang, jat, jaw, and ja'.
 
> 7. Long vowels were diphthongized:
>
> [*aa]>[ey], as in {*-maa}>{-mey}
> [*oo]>[aw], as in {*tungsroot}>{tongSaw'}, {'qoo}>{Qaw'}
 
*tunsroot and {tonSaw'}, not *tungsroot and *{tongSaw'}.
 
> CONSONANTS
(poD)
> The consonants peculiar to {no' Hol}, which underwent a sound shift:
>
> [*s],    which only appeared before [r], as in {*srib}
 
Not quite. It also appears in *syisi "wind".

> [*g'],   as in {*-bug'}
>
> It is hard to say if the grapheme <*g'> represented a single
> consonant (e.g. a voiced uvular stop or a voiced velar fricative
> which unlike the {ta' Hol} [gh] was not "raspy") or whether
> it represented a consonant cluster: [*g] followed by [*'].
 
I'm tempted to think there were no phonological consonant clusters other
than the *-y' (and perhaps *-w') ones we know (as in *moy' "battle"). I
reckon the *CC combinations in no' Hol pattern too weirdly to reflect
consonant clusters. In fact, in the very first issue of HolQeD Allan
Wechsler postulated that Klingon -w' and -y' syllable codas may reflect
old unit phonemes too, so the form of Klingon that preceded no' Hol may
even have had a strict CVC syllable shape. (In fact, perhaps the *-y' in
no' Hol *moy' might also represent a unit phoneme; who knows?)

> ?{no' Hol} may possibly have had three palatalized consonants:

Again, I think these represent unit palatalised consonants. (I'm probably
biased 'cos Ubykh has them, though.)

> INCONSISTENCIES:
(poD)
> {*mu'qberet}>{moQbara'}:
> ?{*mu'qberet} should have become {moQbIrI'},
> or the {no' Hol} form should have been {*mu'qborot}.
> {*-tyeDi}>{-chaj}:
> ?{*-tyeDi} should have become {-chIj},
> or the {no' Hol} form should have been {*-tyoDi}.

Oddly, we do have a few pairs of -e-/-o- relations in ta' Hol:

leH "maintain", loH "administer"
Hegh "die", HoH "kill"
che' "rule", cho' "succeed"

Whether that means anything is open to debate, of course.

> {*-ba'}>{-be'}, as in {*tubba'lit}>{tobbe'lu'}
> The {no' Hol} form of {-be'} should have been {*-bat}
> and indeed there is a {no' Hol} suffix {*-bat}>{-be'},
> attested in {*vivbat}>{vuvbe'}.
> ?Maybe {*-ba'} a mistake, or I am mistaken and {*ba'}
> does not correspond to present day {-be'}.

bIlugh 'e' vIHar. One way to look at it might be that the no' Hol that's
captured in the prologue was a variety in transition, one where final -t
is beginning to become phonetically glottalised and was occasionally
shown as such in the orthography.

> {*'qi'tu'}>{QI'tu'}:
> Apart from {ba'} in {*tubba'lit}, {*'qi'tu'} is the only attested
> {no' Hol} word containing syllables which end in [*'].
> ?The word {*'qi'tu'} should have become {Qu'to'},
> or the {no' Hol} form should have been {*'qettit}

Perhaps {QI'tu'} could be considered a modern reborrowing from no' Hol?

> {q'usru}, {'usru }:
> Both correspond to the {ta' Hol} word {HoS}. Perhaps two versions
> of the word existed side by side, much as present day Klingon has
> both {naHjej} and {naHjej} and in present day English "either" can
> be pronounced in two different ways.

Though I'm just speculating, it could also be that *q' was phonologically
an ejective plosive with glottal stop as an acceptable allophone. Though
obviously comparison to Terran languages is questionable for Klingon, a
few Earth languages do this. If *'usru > {HoS} was a phonological rule,
then the no' Hol pronoun *'uq' should have become *{HoH} in ta' Hol.

Interestingly, note the ta' Hol pair  {SuH} ~ {Su'}, both "ready, standing
by", which would be *sruq' and *sru' in no' Hol and would also support
no' Hol *q' having *' as an allophone.

> {*'ach}:
> The word seems to have the same meaning as the present day {'ach}.
> It is possible that when the book was being prepared for publication
> MO wrote the {ta' Hol} word instead of the {no' Hol} word by mistake.
> If it's not a mistake, {*'ach} would be the only word in the text
> containing the [ch] consonant.

Since no' Hol *j is also preserved I don't think it's a big problem, but
the *a in it is moreso.

Dajqu' qechmeylIj. Daj je no' Hol 'ach Qatlhba'taH!

QeS 'utlh