[tlhIngan Hol] Expressing "all of us"

[nIqolay Q]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 10:00 AM, mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:

> DloraH:
> > But "we", by its nature, refers to more than one entity.
> > vIghro' is singular.
>
> I'm afraid I can't understand the point you are trying to make.
>
> If we say {Hoch vIghro'} then we mean "each cat"". If we say {Hoch
> vIghro'mey} then we mean "all cats". By the same rationale {Hoch maH}
> must mean "all we".
>
> vIghro'mey = many cats
> maH = us (a number of people being considered together). (The {-mey}
> is included in the concept of {maH}).


Technically {​maH} would include the concept of {-pu'}!

I do see where you're coming from here. If {vIghro'mey} refers to a group
of cats, and {Hoch vIghro'mey} means "all cats, all the cats", then if
{maH} refers to a group of people, then why wouldn't {Hoch maH} be used to
mean "all of us, all the people in the group of us"? (Or at least, why
aren't the other Klingonists like myself using it that way, since Maltz
hasn't weighed in one way or another.)

I think the distinction here is between a plural noun and a noun that
collectively refers to a group. For instance, {Hoch ghom} would mean "each
group", not "all of the members of the group", and {Hoch ghommey} would
mean "all groups". So we're left with the question: is {maH} similar to
{vIghro'mey} or to {ghom}? It's grammatically plural, like {vIghro'mey},
but refers to its constituents as a whole and not as individuals, like
{ghom}. Some of the posters here, like myself, are treating it more like
{ghom}. At least for me, I'm doing this because it feels like the "treats
the group as a whole" element is more important than the "grammatically
plural" element.

So if {maH} does work like {ghom}, then {Hoch maH} would refer to "each
'group of us'", and it's somewhat difficult to understand quite what that
would mean. (I'm thinking of the TNG episode where they encountered
hundreds of Enterprises from parallel universes. Someone on the bridge crew
might refer to the totality of the various parallel bridge crews as {Hoch
maH}. Many weird constructions involving pronouns would only really make
sense in cases of multiple or confused identities. They'd probably be
ungrammatical, but the weirdness of the construction would reflect the
weirdness of the situation. {'ach DoS vIchIlqa'.}) We know that {Hoch}
following a noun means something like "all of the given noun, the entirety
of the noun", and following a group noun, it would seem to mean "all the
members of that group" rather than "all the groups". So that's why I
initially suggested {maH Hoch}.
​
Of course, this is all speculation. (I'd like to think it's
reasonably-informed speculation.)​ It's possible, for instance, that you
can't use pronouns in a {Hoch} construction at all, and you'd need to
rephrase it as something like {ghommaj Hoch} "the entirety of our group".
However, we don't know one way or another, and my general inclination in
such ambiguous circumstances is to not assume something is forbidden.
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