[tlhIngan Hol] 'entepray''a'?

[nIqolay Q]

On Sat, Nov 17, 2018 at 12:13 AM Daniel Dadap <daniel at dadap.net> wrote:

> In Star Trek V, there’s a scene where tlha'a HoD says “'entepray''a'?” and
> it’s captioned in English as “Enterprise?” Surely, he wasn’t adding the
> type nine verb suffix “-'a'” to a noun, so what was he doing?
>
> * Using the type one noun suffix “-'a'” to mean something like “The great
> Enterprise?”
> * Referring to the “Enterprise-A” with registry number NCC-1701-A
> * Momentarily forgetting proper grammar for a moment because he was so
> excited
> * Using a dialect or slang where forming questions this way is allowed
> * Adding the verb suffix “-'a'” to a noun, after all
> * Some combination of some of the above possibilities
> * Something else
>
> Are there other examples where the interrogative marker is added to a noun
> for a similar kind of sentence fragment as a question? Has Maltz ever
> commented on this?


Contextually, it seems like it's supposed to be a question. "The
Enterprise? Really?" My guess is that it's a slang construction, adding the
interrogative verb suffix to a noun to ask whether something really is that
noun. Maltz has never commented on it, so I assume it's not a particularly
common sort of slang.

Is MO at the qepHom going on? Maybe someone there can ask him real quick.
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