[tlhIngan Hol] The grammatical number of NOUN + 'ar

[Felix Malmenbeck]

> I don't understand. If you don't know how many of something there is,
> how could you know whether it was singular or plural?

Well, in English, we (usually) treat "how many NOUN:s" as grammatically plural:

"How many people have seen it?" (not "How many person has seen it?")
"How many are there?" (not "How many is there?")

Presumably, Klingon has some similar rule,  or at least a rule-of-thumb for how to deal with this uncertainty.

________________________________________
From: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol-bounces at lists.kli.org> on behalf of De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, September 8, 2017 16:33
To: tlhIngan-Hol
Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] The grammatical number of NOUN + 'ar

On 8 September 2017 at 13:15, Felix Malmenbeck <felixm at kth.se> wrote:
> In TKD §6.4, this is written of the word 'ar:
>
>
> ------------
>
> Finally, 'ar how many? how much? follows the noun to which it refers. It can
> never follow a noun with a plural suffix
> (-pu', -mey, -Du'; see section 3.3.2).
>
> ------------
>
>
> I've always taken this to mean that a noun followed by 'ar is grammatically
> singular, and so we must say, for example, qachvam Dab nuv 'ar?, rather than
> *qachvam luDab nuv 'ar?*.
>
>
> However, it now strikes me that there is another possible interpretation,
> namely that while the noun followed by 'ar is never marked with a plural
> suffix, it could still be considered grammatically plural, and thus allow
> for sentences such as *qachvam luDab nuv 'ar?*.

I don't understand. If you don't know how many of something there is,
how could you know whether it was singular or plural?

--
De'vID
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