[tlhIngan Hol] {neH} and {-bogh}ed nouns

SuStel sustel at trimboli.name
Thu Feb 27 06:21:10 PST 2020


On 2/27/2020 8:42 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
> SuStel:
> > qama' neH qIppu'bogh yaS'e' the officer
> > who hit only the prisoner
> > qama' qIppu'bogh neH yaS'e' the officer
> > who merely hit the prisoner
> > qama' qIppu'bogh yaS'e' neH only the
> > officer who hit the prisoner
>
> ok, I understand these examples, thanks.. But there's still something 
> which confuses me.
>
> Suppose we wrote:
>
> {qama''e' qIppu'bogh neH yaS}
>
> The first translation which comes to mind, is "the prisoner who has 
> been merely hit by the officer". But could it be translated too as 
> "only the prisoner who has been hit by the officer" ?
>
> The reason I'm confused is because I can't stop wondering:
>
> If a construction as {verb-bogh noun} *can* be used as the first 
> "noun" of a noun-noun construction, then why couldn't we have in the 
> place of a second noun, just the {neH} acting with the meaning of "only" ?


This can't be a noun-noun construction because the head noun of the 
relative clause has a type 5 suffix on it, and the first part of a 
noun-noun construction can't have a type 5 suffix on it.

So let's remove that suffix. It's not necessary. Let's say context makes 
it clear that *qama'* is the head noun of the relative clause.

*qama' qIppu'bogh neH yaS*

How would this be interpreted? Let's rebuild this so we can see its 
constituent parts.

As a noun-noun construction, the head noun is *yaS.* So we start with 
the basic idea:

*yaS*/officer/

Next, we add the head noun of the relative clause to form the noun-noun 
construction:

*qama' yaS*/prisoner officer/

Maybe this is an officer in charge of prisoners. Not a very good 
noun-noun construction, but okay.

Now we add the relative clause, remembering that *yaS* is NOT part of 
the clause:

*[qama' qIppu'bogh] yaS*/prisoner-whom-he/she/it-hit officer/

This is an officer of the type /prisoner-whom-he/she/it-hit/. I have no 
idea what that means.

Adding the *neH* doesn't help:

*[qama' qIppu'bogh] neH yaS*/only-prisoner-whom-he/she/it-hit officer/

No clue what this means. None at all.

Clearly, trying to analyze this as a noun-noun construction doesn't make 
any sense.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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