[Tlhingan-hol] Type 5 on first noun

[qov at kli.org]

> So none of you can see what a ludicrous thing to put on a diagram this is,
> given this interpretation? 

Given that Klingon sentences work that way: "on the X, everything else," no
it's not ludicrous to me. You can make most Klingon utterances sound silly
by that kind of translation, as beginners often do.  "At the tables, people
sit."  In fact, to me the fragment {telmeyDaq wovmoHwI'} is exactly
analogous to the English {At the tables, people}. Neither is a complete
sentence. Both work for me because they can very easily be accepted as
incomplete sentences, and both would make reasonable labels on a diagram of
the appropriate thing. 

> We don't see "on the bridge, the helm,"
> or "on the bottom, the landing gear." So why this item?

I'd be happy with those, but would wonder why they specified.  If there were
a sort of Duj that had landing gear on the top and bottom, then yeah, I
would expect those. But meH and pIrmuS are the places you expect Degh and
Saqjan. But I expect SaqjanDaq, telmeyDaq, tlhuQDaq, pIrmuSDaq  je
wovmoHwI'mey lujomlu', so a label telling be which is which makes sense.

Likewise if there were a meH and a chach meH then the two helms could be
specified by where they were.

> If there were no N1-5 N2 restriction, would "at the wings, lights" still
be your
> understanding of the words?

If there were no N1-5 N2 restriction then Klingon would be quite a different
language, because I wouldn't know when the introductory information was over
and the sentence started. I wouldn't know whether to interpret it as an N-N
or a {NDaq < other noun with a different job>} until I had the rest of the
sentence.  Not having spent the last twenty years speaking Klingon without
that rule, I can't really predict how I would read it. Would I err towards
assuming things were a N-N or not? Often it doesn't matter. If a sentence
were {telmeyDaq wovmoHwI'mey lujomlu',} and I lived in the universe where
the first noun in a N-N could have a type-5 then the things installed could
either be "lights on the wings" or uh.no, now that I think about it, I don't
know what "lights of the on the wings" would be, so I'd still interpret it
the same way as in the current universe.  Perhaps you can suggest an N1-5 N2
combination that makes sense in the hypothetical universe, and I'll see if
it works for me.

Because in my universe there is such a rule, (and it doesn't even feel like
a rule to me, just the way to understand things) there's no other way to
interpret it except that the second noun is just hanging out in the location
of the first one. 

I'm still interested in how you feel about stuff like {tajDaq ret'aq vIyach}
or {balDaq taS vIDuD}. If you abhor those, maybe I know where you're coming
from.

-Qov