[tlhIngan Hol] Apollo mission sentence

[Daniel Dadap]

> On May 1, 2019, at 14:31, Will Martin <willmartin2 at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> Your second example carries a lot more weight. Clearly, that is a noun-noun construction {romulusngan nejwI’} with the second noun being described by {Sambogh ‘ej HoHbogh}, which is also interesting, because it would be more typical of other canon to have said {romuluSngan Sambogh nejwI’ HoHbogh je.}, if I’m remembering the song lyrics correctly. Probably not.

You’re thinking of {yoHbogh matlhbogh je SuvwI' Say'moHchu' may' 'Iw}. If we take that as an example of good grammar (I’m not convinced we should), it doesn’t necessarily tell us that we should say {Sambogh HoHbogh je}, since {yoH} and {matlh} are verbs of quality while {Sam} and {HoH} are transitive. It could be that the weird grammar in the song is only allowed for verbs of quality, or only in poetry, or something. We don’t have enough other examples to be sure.

Anyway, yes, this is a good example to show that noun-noun constructions combine noun *phrases* and not just nouns. Otherwise, I think it would have had to have been something like {Sambogh 'ej HoHbogh romuluS nejwI'}.