[Tlhingan-hol] nuq bop bom: 'ay' wa'vatlh wa'maH wej: <wIvmey>

[De'vID jonpIn]

Qov:
>>> "HoD 'oH je patlhwIj'e'," jatlh jonpIn.

ghunchu'wI' 'utlh:
>> I'm uncomfortable with this particular "to be" construction. This is
>> probably just a personal quirk of mine, but it seems wrong to say it
>> that way. Her rank isn't a captain, or "the" captain, but that's how
>> my brain really wants to interpret it. It's not like saying {nuH 'oH
>> je ghopDaj'e'}.
>>
>> For some reason, it sounds right to me in the other direction:
>> {patlhwIj 'oH je HoD'e'}. I think it's the type 4 noun suffix on
>> {patlh} that keeps the "is a/is the" interpretation of {'oH} at bay.
>> I'm not quite sure why I don't have the same problem with {HoD}
>> referring to the name of the rank instead of a person having that rank
>> when it's used as the subject.
>>
>> I'd like to hear what others have to say about it.

Qov:
> I don't have a problem with it the other way.

Funnily, I actually find Qov's original sentence fit the context, but
ghunchu'wI''s reversal sounds strange to me in that context.  I read
{HoD 'oH je patlhwIj'e'} as "my rank is captain too", and {patlhwIj
'oH je HoD'e'} as "captain is also my rank".  The former conveys the
sense, to me, that I think Qov intends: "vajar is not the only
captain, I am also a captain".  The latter sounds like: "captain is
also my rank, in addition to being something else".

Imagine that someone is named {Qel}, which we know is a Klingon name
(Krell), in addition to the word meaning "doctor" (an English analogue
is the name Dean, which could be the first name of a Dean of a
University).  A doctor named {Qel} might say {patlhwIj 'oH je Qel'e'}
"doctor is also my rank (in addition to being my name)", as a response
to someone who said to him, "Oh, Krell is just your name, I thought
you were actually a doctor!"  If Krell serves as both science officer
and doctor (hey, why not?), and an away team leader looks over the
assembled team and says, "Well, we have an engineer, a linguist, and a
science officer, but we need a doctor for this mission", Krell might
say {Qel 'oH je patlhwIj'e'} "my rank is also doctor (in addition to
science officer)".  (I'm using {patlh} "rank" to mean "job title", and
maybe the correct word to use in my examples is {yaH} or something
like that, but that's beside the point.)

Now that I think about it, maybe I have everything backwards.  I had
this trouble for a long time with the question {SoH 'Iv?}.  I always
thought the correct way to say it is {'Iv SoH?}, since the sentence
with the information filled in for the question word is, for example,
{ghunchu'wI' SoH}, and {'Iv} just takes the place (or so I thought) of
the missing information.  But Conversational Klingon had it as {SoH
'Iv?} (it also had {Dochvam nuq?} instead of {nuq Dochvam?}).  So my
intuition about which way these "to be" sentences go is probably
backwards.  Which means that since my intuition is the opposite of
ghunchu'wI''s, he's probably right. :-)

-- 
De'vID