[tlhIngan Hol] pluralizing epithets

[Luciano Montanaro]

As far as I know, petaQ is an insult, but the specific meaning has
been withheld, probably to make it safe to use in a program for
children.
As such, we cannot desume that using -mey is an additional insult; as
far as we know, a petaQ may be a disgusting animal, or thing, so -mey
would be the grammatical correct way to pluralize it.
Am I missing something here?

Luciano

On Fri, Sep 27, 2019 at 2:47 PM SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
>
> On 9/27/2019 10:03 AM, Hugh Son puqloD wrote:
>
>
> On Sep 27, 2019, at 07:55, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
>
> On 9/27/2019 7:04 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
>
> Since we don't know, what exactly a {petaQ} or a {yIntagh} is, I know
> that probably there's no answer.
>
> But I wonder..
>
> How would you pluralize the {petaQ}, {yIntagh}, {toDSaH}, etc ?
>
> Would you use {-pu'} or {-mey} ?
>
> paq'batlh has petaQmey, referring to people.
>
>
> But what if they were just scattered all about? Within the context of the paq'batlh verse, I don’t think such a reading is excluded:
>
> nItlhejbogh petaQmey
>    tInuD chaHvaD
>    nIb yan wIjwI' jan je
>
> There's also zero evidence that the beings referred to are scattered about, and the "assembled warriors" are "at your side," addressing Molor. Impossible to be scattered? No, but not very likely either. Almost any plural could be imagined to be "scattered" if you try hard enough.
>
> What this quote doesn't do is prove that you must insult the petaQ you're addressing by referring to them as things; it just seems that Molor happens to do so. It seems obvious that insulting someone with petaQ might lead you to further insult them by implying they're things instead of people, so saying petaQmey instead of petaQpu' might be common, but we have no data to support that.
>
> --
> SuStel
> http://trimboli.name
>
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-- 
Luciano Montanaro

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