[Tlhingan-hol] headless {-bogh}?

[De'vID]

lojmIt tI'wI' nuv:
> But he gives us some canon examples that don’t quite neatly fit this
> description. SuStel likes to bring up a recording from the Star Trek Klingon
> game of Okrand saying {Dajatlhbogh vIyajbe’}. As we all recognize, this
> could have been a flubbed recording, but it is apparently canon, and may
> have just as easily been intentional. Anyway, this is a case where there is
> an implied head noun that isn’t spoken. That’s one case that is unexplained
> in TKD.

I doubt that it's a flubbed recording, as they could've easily
excluded it. Rather, it seems like it's something they initially
intended to include, but then changed their mind about, for whatever
reason.

So I peeked at the game's files, and there are four English error
messages and five Klingon ones. They are:

"I was unable to understand that. Please repeat it."
"That was pronounced incorrectly. Please say it again."
"I find no match for what you just said. Please say it again."
"I am unable to interpret your input. Please repeat."

{qayajbe'. yIjatlhqa'.}
{qayajlaHbe'. yIjatlhqa'.}
{Dajatlhbogh vIyajlaHbe'. yIjatlhqa'.}
{jIyajbe'. yIjatlhqa'.}
{jIyajlaHbe'. yIjatlhqa'.}

(Note that it's {Dajatlhbogh vIyaj*laH*be'}... The {-laH} is there,
though it seems that the FAQ has it without the {-laH}, and that
omission has been repeated subsequently on the mailing list:
http://higbee.cots.net/Holtej/klingon/faq.htm#3.7 )

The English and Klingon sentences are not translations of each other.
That's clear not just from their meaning, but from the fact that they
differ in number. My guess would be that they asked Marc Okrand to
record "a few" messages in Klingon with a meaning like "I didn't
understand that, please repeat." He came up with five, and whomever
was tasked with the English equivalent came up with four.

Presumably, these were intended to be randomised for variety. I can no
longer run the game, but everyone says that that recording isn't used
anywhere, so I'll assume that's true. (In that case, what is actually
said when the user says something the game doesn't recognise? Can
someone check this? Did they just sticking with using one of the
sentences always?)

Also, when I had previously considered that sentence in isolation, I
had a theory that it was part of a "fill in the blank" statement,
i.e., the user says "X", and the computer responds with {X Dajatlhbogh
vIyajlaHbe'}. But I don't think that's supported by the way that file
is organised (it's in the middle of the other recorded error messages,
with no special treatment). In other words, it looks like it's meant
to be dropped in as a replacement for {qayajbe'. yIjatlhqa'.} as more
or less an exact functional equivalent.

-- 
De'vID