[Tlhingan-hol] 2 nouns in apposition

[qunnoQ HoD]

> If I say to you "as a sci-fi fan, I recommend you read this book", who's the sci-fi fan here? Me, or you? From the text alone we not only do not have, but outright
> cannot have, a clue with any degree of certainty.

ghantoH pup 'oH mu'tlheghvam'e'. jIQochbe'.

On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 9:19 AM, Rohan Fenwick <qeslagh at hotmail.com> wrote:
> ghItlhpu' Voragh, jatlh:
>> qeylIS loDnI' 'opleS chovan (PB)
>
> jang Anthony, jatlh:
>> Or,  "One day, brother of Kahless, you will bow before me."? Again,
>> how to distinguish between two adjacent nouns X Y meaning "X's Y"
>> and "X which is Y"?
>
> Quite simply: context. There's no other way. There is no grammatical marking
> that distinguishes such constructions from one another, no external
> syntactic clue. Punctuation may be present to help, but can't always be
> relied upon. In this instance, it's knowing what the story is, and knowing
> who's talking, that allows you to work out that this is probably an
> appositional compound rather than a genitive one.
>
> taH:
>> Context cannot be always relied on to resolve ambiguities.
>
> Some ambiguities are superficially unresolvable, but this is no more true of
> Klingon than it is of any other language. This is the reason why some
> English prescriptivists keep bleating about dangling modifiers despite the
> fact that they're perfectly grammatical. If I say to you "as a sci-fi fan, I
> recommend you read this book", who's the sci-fi fan here? Me, or you? From
> the text alone we not only do not have, but outright cannot have, a clue
> with any degree of certainty. But context resolves the issue perfectly well
> (in this instance, two people being familiar with each other's reading
> preferences). It's unfair to pick on Klingon for this.
>
> taH:
>> Which classes of nouns can be used as Y in the X Y construction as
>> "X which is Y"?
>
> I know of no prescriptive rule in this regard.
>
> taH:
>> Readers and listeners should not have to go through steps of logic
>> based on context and the general situation to distinguish meaning
>> :: the meaning should be apparent at first reading/listening.
>
> That's simply wrong. Going through steps of logic based upon context and
> situation is what readers and listeners ALWAYS have to do, whether you
> realise it or not. Context informs everything. Let me draw another example
> in English. If you and I were sitting in a bar, and I say to you "look at
> this bloodwine", where your eyes go is going to be entirely informed by your
> knowledge of where the bloodwine is. If it's in a cup in my hand, you're
> going to look at that. If I spilled it down my shirt, regardless of the cup
> you're going to be likely to look at the stain on my shirt, not the cup in
> my hand. If there's a cup in my hand and another one in front of me, you may
> feel a momentary sense of confusion while you try to work out which one I
> mean by "this". But if you first look at the one on the table, then notice
> out of your peripheral vision that I'm holding up a glass for you to look
> at, then your confusion is resolved. All of those possibilities, though, are
> based on ambiguity around what the word "this" could mean and the role
> played by context in disambiguating those meanings in your mind - whether or
> not you consciously realise such a process is going on.
>
> I'm sorry to be so blunt about it, but neither in Klingon nor in any other
> natural or naturalistic language will you get such a universal unambiguity
> of meaning. If you want that, you should learn Lojban. But Klingon doesn't,
> and wasn't ever intended to, work like that.
>
> QeS 'utlh
>
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