[Tlhingan-hol] "up to" or "as many as"

[Rohan Fenwick]

ghItlhpu' ghunchu'wI', jatlh:
> For what it's worth, I prefer {jav DuHbe'bogh Doch} over {DuHbe'bogh
> jav Doch} here. I see nothing wrong or even unusual with putting a
> relative clause in the second noun of a noun-noun phrase.

As I said previously, it's true that there is no formal rule prohibiting it, but purely from a canon standpoint I still argue that idiomatic Klingon probably avoids constructing noun-noun constructions of this form if at all possible. Having had the chance to look a little more thoroughly, I've located two more clear examples to add to the two I posted yesterday, and consequently I'm even more convinced that stylistic preference is not a strong enough argument to ignore canon here:

yIntaHbogh tlhIngan Soj tlhol
"raw Klingon food which is still alive" (S21)
(not *"living Klingons' raw food")

joqtaHbogh molor tIqDu'
"Molor's still-beating hearts" (paq'batlh: paq'raD 23.47)
(not *"the hearts of the still-beating Molor")

pubtaHbogh ghargh HIq vItlhutlh
"I will drink boiling wormwine" (PK)
(not *"I will drink boiling-worm wine")

yuQDaq ghaHtaHbogh Hoch tlhIngan'e'
"each Klingon on the planet" (paq'batlh: paq'QIH 3.32)
(not *"the Klingons of each [person] who is on the planet")

I could find only a single possible counterexample, and even that's highly ambiguous:

molor chalqach 'avlu'bogh pIrmuS lupawta'
"they reach the base of Molor's guarded tower" (paq'batlh: paq'raD 18.13-14)

{molor chalqach 'avlu'bogh} could indeed be a genuine noun-noun construction with a relative 
clause as the second noun phrase - the English gloss would indicate [N1 molor N2 [RelP chalqach 'avlu'bogh]], "Molor's tower which is guarded" - but since the translation is a free one, it could be just a bog-standard 
relative clause with a noun-noun construction as its grammatical object: an underlying structure of [RelP [N1 molor N2 chalqach] 'avlu'bogh] "the tower of Molor, which is guarded" is equally possible.

> As for the original question, I don't think the general case is important enough
> to need a general solution. Usually I think I would just leave out the idea.

Agreed.

QeS
 		 	   		  
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