[Tlhingan-hol] qIHpu'ghach wa'DIch: 'ay' cha'

[Felix Malmenbeck]

>> My counter-argument would be that {-'a'} applies only to the word {ngogh}, not the whole phrase, and the {Borg ngogh'a'} certainly is remarkable by the standards of what usually constitutes a {ngogh}. The only canon examples of it to date refer to pillows,
 loaves of bread, chocolate and building bricks, and the Borg cube beats all of them by a huge margin.
>That's how I read it, i.e., as {[Borg] [ngogh'a']} not {[Borg ngogh]['a']}.
Just be sure to be consistent so that later if they talk about a Borg sphere, it's a {Borg moQ'a'} and not a mere {Borg moQ}.

While I agree that the -'a' mostly refers to the ngogh, I feel the word "Borg" sets the context. "From the class of Borg-related things, take a block"...  ...and by the standards of this class, this is not ngogh'a'; it's just a standard-issue ngogh.

I doubt there is such a thing as a universal measure for ngoghmey. If that were the case, you'd have just three categories, which seems rather poor. Rather, let there be ngoghHommey, ngoghmey motlh and ngogh'a'mey for every category.

qeylIS betleH would probably be held as a betleH'a', but it's not called qeylIS betleH'a'; it receives its grandeur from being prefixed by "qeylIS". If you were to refer to qeylIS betleH'a', I'd assume you were talking about the greatest of his many betleHmey.
Likewise, the telmey of a neghvar are perhaps tel'a'mey when compared to the telDu' of a bird or even the telmey of a toQDuj, but if you were to refer to neghvar tel'a'mey, the idea I'd get is "the Negh'Var's main wings".

Consider also a pilllow might be called QongDaq buqHom (and a sleeping bag a QongDaq buq'a'), and a pants pocket a yopwaH buq. To me, this supports the idea that -'a' and -Hom are distinctions within a category (most of the time, at least; in natural language, I'd expect there to be plenty of exceptions).