[Tlhingan-hol] Noun cases

[Philip Newton]

On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 15:13, David Trimboli <david at trimboli.name> wrote:
> On 11/30/2011 8:20 AM, Michael Everson wrote:
>>
>> Klingon doesn't have declensions; it's agglutinative.
>
> Agglutination and declension are mutually exclusive? Isn't the inflection of
> a noun by agglutinative suffixes a declension?

Also, if we take "declension" to be "declension class" (as in "the
Latin fourth declension"), Klingon arguably has that, too... three
noun classes, each with its own separate form of the plural marker
-mey -Du' -pu'. And with each noun belonging to a specific class,
yielding things such as {jIb Ho'Du'} even though the teeth of a comb
are not (usually...) a body part.

But then there is {tIqpu'}, and the "scattered all about" of {puqmey}
and the like, which makes such a Latinate analysis messy.

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