[Tlhingan-hol] Type 5 on first noun

[lojmIt tI'wI' nuv 'utlh]

I think it’s amazing that you could misread what I wrote so badly as to suspect that I thought Okrand was suggesting that a noun with {-Daq} would modify a noun.

The ambiguity is which of two verbs {DujDaq} applies itself to. Everything I wrote was about how a noun with {-Daq} gives the location of the action of a verb, not to a noun. The nouns do have a location within the action of the verb, but the [noun]Daq always locates the action, not the nouns. The action is like a container that has nouns in it, and the locative locates the container, not the nouns within it. They are simply along for the grammatical ride.

“I shot an elephant in my pajamas”. “In my pajamas” tells where the shooting happened. The shooter and the elephant are both locationally contained within the action of shooting, so you can’t tell which of them is in the pajamas, since all the pajamas locate is the action of the shooting.

Ah, but a joke is less funny when you have to explain it...

lojmIt tI’wI’ nuv ‘utlh
Door Repair Guy, Retired Honorably



> On Feb 13, 2016, at 7:06 AM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
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