[tlhIngan Hol] Expressing "all of us"

[mayqel qunenoS]

Thank you all for replying.

Reading your replies, I learned something important, something which eluded
me so far.

I didn't know that in a noun-noun construction, where the second noun is
{Hoch} or {HochHom}, that this second noun is the head-noun. All this time
I believed, that some special rules apply, with regards to the {Hoch} and
{HochHom}. But apparently they don't, so I learned something important,
thanks.

However, as Rhona Fenwick pointed out, why not use {Hoch maH} ?

Even if {maH Hoch} indeed violates the accord rule, the {Hoch maH} evades
the accord problem, so everything is ok.

So, unless someone disagrees with Rhona, I will be using {Hoch maH}, which
I like a lot.

Thank you QeS, for sharing this idea.

~ nI'ghma

On Jan 28, 2018 10:04, "Rhona Fenwick" <qeslagh at hotmail.com> wrote:

ghItlhpu' mayqel, jatlhpu':

> Sometime ago, I had asked of a way to say "all of us", as if in "all of
us like cats".

(poD vay')

> {vIghro'mey DImuSHa' maH Hoch} ?
> all of us love cats

As others have pointed out, since the head of the phrase *maH Hoch* is
still *Hoch*, it should condition third-person agreement.

With that said, I think that it should not be *maH Hoch* as nIqolay
suggests, but *Hoch maH*. *Hoch* thus acts as a normal quantifier for its
nominal (in this case, pronominal) head. For instance, we know *Hoch nuvpu'*
is "all of the people", and we also know from *paq'batlh* that *Hoch negh*
is "all of the soldiers" (*paq'raD* 11.21), and it's only a very small step
to go from these to *Hoch maH*, which should take first-person plural
agreement. We don't have any canon examples, but I feel it's a natural
extension of the properties of both *Hoch* and pronouns as outlined in TKD
5.1. I don't think it's the least bit unnatural to say, for instance, *targh
DIparHa' 'op maH 'ach vIghro' DIparHa' Hoch maH* "some of us like targs,
but all of us like cats".

Whether we can leave out the free pronoun *maH* to give the same meaning
is, of course, an entirely different kettle of *qagh*. Many pro-drop
languages permit this: Georgian, Turkish, Finnish and Spanish, at least.
But we can't in good conscience assume that Klingon also does this, not
least because Klingon seems to be more rigid with its targets of agreement
than many Earth languages are.


jangpu' SuStel, jatlh:

> The fierceness with which people desire a y'all in Klingon horrifies me.
This is no different.


I disagree strongly. Not only are the conversational implicatures of
speaking *to* a bunch of people versus speaking *on behalf of* a bunch of
people quite different, but a vast array of human languages with rigidly
defined number agreement are quite happy to allow plural pronouns of all
sorts to be quantified. What's more, in Klingon there's nothing we know
explicitly about either *maH* or *Hoch* that should in principle get in the
way of our using them together should the situation call for it. The *only*
problem we have is that we just don't have an explicit canon example
illustrating how or whether Klingon quantifies pronouns, though I believe
we have enough information about both quantifiers and free pronouns to be
able to extrapolate (in the absence of a contradictory formal rule, at
least).


Also, no less a speaker than Seqram consciously lampshaded the "all of us"
question at the end of his article about *Hoch* more than two decades ago (
*HolQeD* 5:2.11), so with all due respect (and I do have much respect for
you), maybe ease up a bit on being horrified.


QeS 'utlh

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