[Tlhingan-hol] mutually subordinate clauses?

[De'vID jonpIn]

De'vID:
>> I suspect that most people would understand the following sentence,
>> but is it grammatically aberrant?
>> {mapawbe'chugh wIHIvlu'pu'mo'}

loghaD:
> I might imagine it being used in casual conversations, though, just as I can imagine a Klingon casually throwing out a stand-alone subordinate clause.

Yes, that's how I felt about it as well.

De'vID:
>> Does it need to be recast as something like one of the following?
>> {mapawbe'chugh wIHIvlu'pu'mo' mapawbe'}
>> {mapawbe'chugh vaj wIHIvlu'pu'}

Qov:
> The latter doesn't make the cause and effect clear.

You mean you might interpret it as "If we don't arrive, then we will
have been attacked (as a consequence of our not arriving)"?  Doesn't
the {-pu'} on the second sentence, but not on the first, lead away
from (even if it doesn't completely rule out) this interpretation?

De'vID:
>> (I didn't invent the original sentence, I read a sentence like it
>> somewhere and understood it, but its grammar bothered me a bit so I
>> replaced the words to form a grammatically equivalent sentence, for
>> the purposes of discussing it.)

Qov:
> I hope it wasn't in nuq bop bom.

No, it was in a personal conversation.  The original was something
like, "If you don't hear from me, it's because I'm occupied with (a
particular task)."  I changed the sentence because the specifics and
context weren't relevant to its grammar.

loghaD:
> However, my favorite remains {wIHIvlu'be'chugh mapawbej.}: It's short and succinct.

That's what someone might write if they had time to think about it,
but that's usually not how sentences are formed in conversation.

The following two sentences express logically equivalent ideas, but
people usually say something like the first and rarely (depending on
context) something like the second:
"If we don't arrive... well, it's because we were attacked on the way."
"If we're not attacked on the way, we'll certainly arrive."

I also think there's a subtle difference in tone between the following
(this is diverging now from the grammatical discussion into one about
culture):
"If you don't hear from me, it's because I'm busy with (some task)."
"If I'm not busy with (some task), you'll hear from me for sure."

The first is almost apologetic: "Don't take offense if I don't get
back to you, as you know I'm really busy with (some task)".  The
second one puts the task first: "The task is more important than you,
you'll have to wait until I complete it."  Possibly to a Klingon, one
is not more polite or rude than the other.

-- 
De'vID