[Tlhingan-hol] Type 5 on first noun

[SuStel]

On 2/10/2016 9:18 PM, qov at kli.org wrote:
>> On 2/10/2016 8:00 PM, qov at kli.org wrote:
>>> Picture a knife.  It has an attached handle. Picture a finger. It runs
>>> gentle along the length of the handle, stops, and then goes back and
>>> does it again. That's what it's supposed to mean.
>
> It is my belief that to consider "a knife with an attached handle" as
> anything other than something that looks vaguely like this:
>
> OOOOO>>>>>>>>>>>
>
> with the OOOs being hilt and the >>>s being blade is exactly equivalent to
> considering that
>
> {tajDaq ret'aq vIyach} could refer to standing on the knife while stroking
> an unrelated handle.
>
> That is, grammatically possible, but not a conclusion a reasonable reader
> leaps to.  I too consider the other possible interpretations of tajDaq when
> I write such a sentence, but am content that by giving the reader the
> context that the handle stroking occurs to a handle and on a knife, that
> they will presume it to be the handle of the knife that is stroked. They can
> trust that if the stroker is seated on a giant prop knife stroking some
> unrelated handle, that I will give them that information.

All of this is irrelevant. The basic question is, does {tajDaq} in 
{tajDaq ret'aq vIyach} specify the location of the handle or the 
location of the stroking? It specifies the location of the stroking. A 
reasonable person will, indeed, assume that, given a knife and a handle, 
we're talking about a knife-handle, but your sentence does not say "I 
stroke a knife-handle," it says "I stroke a handle in the vicinity of a 
knife." Sure, fine, most people will assume you mean a knife-handle, BUT 
YOU DIDN'T SAY THAT. There is no grammatical support for that 
understanding, only a common-sense one.

> For you, the need to ensure that it is the action of the sentence that takes
> place at the specified location is so strong, that without a specified
> action, the utterance is invalid.

Wrong. I'm perfectly happy to accept locative nouns or noun phrases 
without accompanying actions. If you wanted to entitle a chapter 
{vaS'a'Daq} "at the great hall," I'd say go right ahead. It's only when 
you use a syntactic noun to modify another noun, and then claim that 
your syntactic noun isn't really modifying the other noun, but a verb 
you haven't uttered, that I call foul.

By the way, TKD begins its discussion of syntactic markers with "These 
suffixes indicate something about the function of the noun in the 
sentence."

>> But it sure LOOKS like you tried to express that in the sentence,
>> by ignoring the no-type-5 rule.

> I definitely didn't, because I have trouble even imagining what "the handle
> of the on-the-knife" would be,

Really? Seems a perfectly straightforward genitive relationship to me, 
albeit one that doesn't usually happen in English (or Klingon). Perhaps 
translating it using possessive is what confuses you. It's an 
on-the-knife handle (perhaps in opposition to an off-the-knife handle). 
It's an on-the-wing light (as opposed to an on-the-tail light). A 
genitive is any noun or noun phrase that modifies another noun or noun 
phrase. That's what Klingon's noun-noun construction does. It's not just 
possessive. (E.g., {baS 'In} "metal drum.")

Think about the phrase "nowhere man." Now, in Klingon {pagh} does not 
have a locative sense, but {naDev}, {pa'}, and {Dat} do. Suppose you 
have two knives, one you keep here and the other you keep there. You 
think of one as your {naDev taj} and the other as your {pa' taj}. (And 
ignore for now the word {pa'} "room.") There, you've got legal Klingon 
noun-noun phrases that include locative ideas in the first noun.

{QamchIyDaq 'uQ'a'} is EXACTLY the same, except that it's not allowed. 
{tajDaq ret'aq} is EXACTLY the same, except that it's not allowed.

> The type-5 is a wall that separates Y from the rest of the sentence.
> It couldn't noun-noun X even if X wasn't a smelly, chauvinistic bag
> of lard in which Y had no interest, plus Y is involved in a committed
> relationship with the verb.

But that's my whole point. The rules say what you've said above, but the 
examples don't. You're saying, "I don't accept that those are illegal 
noun-nouns because my definition of noun phrases says they would be 
illegal." That's a circular argument.

Okrand translates "The Feast at Qam-chee" as {QamchIyDaq 'uQ'a'}. The 
English is a perfectly valid prepositional noun phrase. The Klingon is a 
genitive noun-noun construction, formed illegally, unless Okrand comes 
up with a retrofitted explanation. If the rule about syntactic markers 
inside noun-nouns didn't exist, {QamchIyDaq 'uQ'a'}, as a noun-noun, 
would mean EXACTLY "the feast at Qam-chee."

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name