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

[Felix Malmenbeck]

Very good point about qeylIS mIv'a'. Not quite sure what to think about that.

That being said, I'm not suggesting that X Y'a' means [X Y]'a'; I agree that it means [X] [Y'a']. I just feel that -'a' and -Hom need to take context into account, and one way of setting the context is by using compound nouns.
All borgh ngoghmey (and certainly all borgh ngogh Dujmey)  are far larger and more complex than the regular bricks or lumps we encounter inday-to-day life, and anybody in this sort of situation would know that, so the -'a' seems incredibly redundant, unlike in the case with qeylIS mIv'a', where you wouldn't know if it were a crown or just an ordinary hat if not for the -'a'.

Furthermore, using ngogh'a' for all Borg Cubes robs you of the ability to use -Hom and -'a' to distinguish between various block-shaped Borg ships, such as Borg Scout Ships, Borg Cubes, Borg Tactical Cubes and Borg Diamonds. You can of course use other constructions, but it strikes me as being a waste of two suffixes.
________________________________________
From: De'vID jonpIn [de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 20:36
To: tlhIngan-Hol at kli.org
Subject: Re: [Tlhingan-hol] qIHpu'ghach wa'DIch: 'ay' cha'

loghaD:
> 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.

How would you interpret the following?
{qeylIS mIv'a'}
{qeylIS Daqtagh'a' DuQwI'Hommey}
{lopno' 'uQ'a'}

I don't think {qeylIS betleH} is a {betleH'a'} merely by virtue of being associated with Kahless, unless it was already considered a {betleH'a'} by itself.  Kahless can carry a {tajHom}, just like anybody else.

loghaD:
> 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".

I also get the idea "the Negh'Var's main wings", but I think we arrive at this meaning differently:
{[neghvar tel]['a'][mey]} "[the Negh'Var's [main] wings]" vs.
{[neghvar] [tel'a'mey]} "[the Negh'Var's] [main wings]"

I think {tel'a'} by itself has a meaning "main-wing".  This isn't clear in English because it's two words (i.e., we don't have a single word to describe the thing that {tel'a'} refers to), but consider {telHom}, which we can perhaps render using a word such as "flap".  Like {mIv'a'}, I think {telHom} is not just a {tel} that has a relative relationship to regular {tel}, but its own type of {tel}.  A {telHom} isn't just a "wing which is small", but a "small-wing", a "flap".

This is how I understand {SoSbor'a'} as well.  A ship can have a {De'wI' SoSbor'a'} "main computer core", independently of whether it has any other computer cores.

This is also how we can have {qepHom} which are bigger than {qep'a'}. {{:-)

loghaD:
> 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).

So {buq} is a word that we have different English words for, depending on their relative size/function.  For example, "sack", "bag", "pocket", "purse", "pouch".  A pillow could be called a {QongDaq buqHom} (something like "bed purse"), whereas a sleeping bag is a {QongDaq buq'a'} (something like "bed sack"), and a pants pocket is just {yopwaH buq} "pants pocket".  I'd still parse {QongDaq buqHom} as {[QongDaq] [buqHom]} rather than {[QongDaq buq][Hom]}.

--
De'vID