[tlhIngan Hol] bID in noun-noun constructions

[De'vID]

On Thu, 14 May 2020 at 12:23, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:

> Because indeed, what would a "deck half" be ? It sounds like we have
> something which someone built, which is comprised of two halves, with
> only one of them being a deck. Or perhaps we have a half which is "of
> the deck kind". Strange indeed.
>

Are you familiar with the genre of the "combining mecha"?
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CombiningMecha

Without knowing what you're familiar with, it's hard to come up with a
specific example, but there are any number of shows/comic books where two
things combine and become something else. Say, two animal mecha combine to
become a robot.

The Duocon subgroup from the Transformers has this characteristic. For
example, a car and a helicopter combine to form the robot Battletrap:
https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Battletrap

Each vehicle is therefore a {qoq bID}, a "robot's half", the type of which
is not a robot.

In contrast, a {bID qoq} is "half a robot", maybe like if you took a sword
and cut Battletrap down the middle from head to toe.


> Anyways, if it's not much trouble, please read the following example,
> and tell me whether you agree with my understanding of how {bID} works
> in conjunction with singular nouns.
>
> There's a pizza on the table; half of it has mushrooms and half has meat.
>
> If I say {bID pItSa' vISop}, then it means that I'll eat half of the
> pizza without specifying which half I'll eat. Perhaps I'll eat the
> mushroom half, perhaps the meat half, or perhaps I'll eat from both.
> What matters though, is that when I finish, half the amount of the
> pizza will be gone.
>

This is how I would understand it.


> If I say {pItSa' yav 'atlhqam bID vISop} then it means "I'll eat the
> mushroom half of the pizza".
>
> Do you agree with the above ?
>

I would understand that sentence with the intended meaning.

-- 
De'vID
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