[Tlhingan-hol] Irregular plurals & prefixes

[Philip Newton]

On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 06:29, ghunchu'wI' 'utlh <qunchuy at alcaco.net> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 1:42 PM, David Trimboli <david at trimboli.name> wrote:
>>
>> Irregular plurals are treated as grammatically singular.
>
> The Klingon Dictionary says this explicitly on page 24.
>
> (Actually, it refers to them as "inherently plural" nouns, a phrase
> also used consistently in Klingon for the Galactic Traveler. The term
> "irregular plurals" seems to have been invented by people like us.)

At qepHom'a' wa'maHDIch, Quvar suggested the German translation
"Geschirr" for {ngop}, which is a collective noun meaning, roughly,
"china", "tableware", "plates etc." - to help people realise that
treating such nouns as singular is normal.

Since then, I've been wondering whether such "inherently plural" nouns
can be considered a kind of collective noun along the lines of
"furniture" -- you say "the furniture *is* dirty" even if several
items of furniture are dirty (that is, you use a singular verb for
multiple objects, since you're using a collective noun to refer to all
of them together).

Cheers,
Philip
-- 
Philip Newton <philip.newton at gmail.com>