[Tlhingan-hol] Type 5 on first noun

[SuStel]

On 2/12/2016 11:11 PM, lojmIt tI'wI' nuv 'utlh wrote:

> I know, it sounds weird, but that part was pretty clear when Okrand
> talked about how “I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How the elephant got
> into my pajamas, I’ll never know,” is funny in Klingon as in English
> because the same ambiguity exists. The reason that you can’t tell
> whether the shooter or the elephant is in the pajamas in “I shot an
> elephant in my pajamas” is that “in my pajamas” does not locate either
> the shooter or the elephant. It locates the action of shooting.

You're misremembering what Okrand said about the joke.

-----
MO: One of the things you talk about was ambiguity. "{DujDaq puq
     DaqIppu'bogh vIlegh}," <I see the child who you hit on the ship>, 
or <on
     the ship I see the child...> and that's ambiguous. I thought about it
     and I said "That's fine." And it's ambiguous in exactly the same way
     that English is. You want ambiguity in language, I would think. It's
     not math.

     I was reading this bit about "I see the child you hit on the ship,"
     and for whatever reason what popped into my head was Groucho
     Marx, that old Groucho Marx joke, you know, "I just shot an
     elephant in my pajamas... and how he got in my pajamas I'll never
     know." You can say that in Klingon, no problem; they'll get the
     joke. There's not many jokes you can get to translate into Klingon,
     but that one would work.
-----

The joke he's referring to uses ambiguity between

[DujDaq puq DaqIppu'bogh] vIlegh

and

DujDaq [puq DaqIppu'bogh] vIlegh

Does {DujDaq} belong to {DaqIppu'bogh} or {vIlegh}? That's the 
ambiguity. It was never about attaching -Daq to a noun.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name