[Tlhingan-hol] Irregular plurals & prefixes

[David Trimboli]

On 11/21/2011 3:28 AM, Philip Newton wrote:
>
> 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).

It depends on your local variety of English and the specific phrase. In 
American English we say "the group is angry," but in British English 
you'd probably say "the group are angry." On the other hand, so far as I 
know all varieties of English would say "the police are coming."

-- 
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/