[Tlhingan-hol] Piraha

[Will Martin]

Comments below:

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



> On Nov 1, 2015, at 3:22 PM, Lieven <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:
> 
>> On 11/1/2015 5:49 AM, qunnoQ HoD wrote:
>>> 1. a basic rule in Klingon is one main verb per sentence
> 
> {mataHmeH maSachnIS} "we must expand to survive", two verbs in one sentence.
> 

The {-meH} clause is not a main verb.

>>> 2. in Klingon we can't apply multiple adverbs to a single verb
> 
> I'm not sure what is considered an adverb, but I think I'd accept {batlh nom Soppu'} "He ate quickly with honor”

I’d love for this to be acceptable, but apparently Okrand has never offered us a canon example that has two adverbials and has never given us advice on their use. It’s not so much that we can’t do it as it is that we don’t know that we can. We do know that when we would have expected two adjectives applied to a noun, Okrand changed one of them to a relative clause, likely to avoid the issue, and we’ve seen him use multiple relative clauses in the example you cite below.

>>> 4. in Klingon we tend to think we can’t use two adverbs for a single
> [...]
>> We don't have any evidence I can think of that lets us use two
>> adjectival verbs on a single noun.
> 
> For the record, we have the somehow poetic and controversial phrase in the warriors anthem {yoHbogh matlhbogh je SuvwI'}
> 
>> I prefer to make BOTH qualities into relative clauses, for symmetry.
>> E.g., {HoSbogh tlhIngan 'ej 'IHbogh} "strong and beautiful Klingon."
> 
> I prefer this too.

In this case, I think it’s a matter of style and either way is acceptable. {‘IHbogh tlhIngan HoS} is my preferred construction, being more efficient, and placing both descriptors closer to the noun they describe. But I fully accept both HoSbogh tlhIngan ‘ej ‘IHbogh} or {HoSbogh ‘IHbogh je tlhIngan}. In this case, the {je} is functioning as saying “also” to the verb of the relative clause, rather than ending a list of nouns. “the Klingon who is strong and also powerful.” Your preference is more like “The Klingon who is strong and who is powerful”. 

Both are quite valid, as is “the strong Klingon who is beautiful”. The only one we don’t know to be valid would be “The strong, beautiful Klingon”.

> -- 
> Lieven L. Litaer
> aka Quvar valer 'utlh
> Grammarian of the KLI
> http://www.facebook.com/Klingonteacher
> http://www.klingonwiki.net
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Tlhingan-hol mailing list
> Tlhingan-hol at kli.org
> http://mail.kli.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol/attachments/20151102/8a2b6774/attachment.html>