[tlhIngan Hol] Clean all the plates

[Daniel Dadap]

I was recently considering the difference in meaning between “every” and “all” when Hoch precedes a non-explicitly marked plural and an explicitly marked plural, respectively. I was uncertain how this interacts with irregular plurals, which are grammatically singular. Are they considered explicitly plural because they are a plural form semantically, or does explicitly plural mean that a plural suffix must be used?

Consider:

raS yISay'moH: clean the table
raS tISay'moH / raSmey tISay'moH: clean the tables

jengva' yISay'moH: clean the plate
ngop yISay'moH: clean the plates
but not: *ngop tISay'moH

“Clean every plate” would obviously be “Hoch jengva' yISay'moH”, but for “clean all the plates” would it be:

1) Hoch ngop yISay'moH
2) Hoch ngopmey yISay'moH
3) Hoch ngopmey tISay'moH
4) Hoch jengva'mey tISay'moH (Assume you’re not already saying jengva'mey because the plates are scattered all over the place)
5) Something else
6) We don’t know

My instinct is (1), but my instinct is often wrong.