[tlhIngan Hol] law' puS with the -taHvIS and type-9 clauses preceding each element

[De'vID]

On Thu, 11 Feb 2021 at 16:17, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> There is no reason to anticipate an omitted context for the second half of
>> the comparison. For that, I would have said:
>>
>> {juHlIjDaq SoH Sub law’ Dat ghaH Sub puS.}
>>
>> If you give one scope, that stretches to the whole comparison. If you
>> give a second scope, then the context has significant meaning for the
>> comparison, because it’s really the two contexts that are being compared.
>>
>> Does this make sense to you?
>>
>
> Yes, perfectly. But my point is that the sentence {reH latlh qabDaq qul
> tuj law' Hoch tuj puS} suggests the scope of the {-Daq} is not necessarily
> the entire comparison.
>
> Do you not see that the intended meaning of this sentence seems to
> contradict your analysis? The comparison here is not between just things on
> someone else's face, it's between something (a fire) on someone else's face
> and everything else (including outside of someone else's face).
>

Having clarified that you believe the proverb refers to only "ONE fire, and
the place where it is hottest is at someone else’s face", let me revise my
response to your claim that "If you give a second scope, then the context
has significant meaning for the comparison, because it’s really the two
contexts that are being compared."

For the sake of the argument, let's assume that this claim is true. (This
isn't agreed upon by everyone. The entire point of this thread is that some
people don't think the {QamtaHvIS... tortaHvIS...} sentence would be
grammatical.)

If there is only one fire, and the comparison is being made between the two
contexts "on someone else's face" and "elsewhere", why wouldn't the proverb
have been *{reH latlh qabDaq qul tuj law' Dat qul tuj puS}? You suggested
that a better translation of the proverb would be "The hottest fire is on
someone else’s face.” I think that *this* Klingon sentence (with {Dat})
would match that meaning.

Based on your explanation of how you think the scope works in the
{qIbDaq...} sentence, I would have expected {latlh qabDaq qul tuj law' Hoch
tuj puS} to mean "The hottest thing on someone else's face is fire"
(parallel to "the greatest warrior in this galaxy is you"). OTOH, if the
{latlh qabDaq} proverb means what you say it means, then I'd have expected
{qIbDaq SuvwI''e' SoH Dun law' Hoch Dun puS} to mean something like "the
greatest you in terms of warriors is in this galaxy", which I'd render as
"you're at your most wonderful as a warrior in this galaxy" (parallel to
"the hottest fire is on someone else's face", which I paraphrased as "the
fire is at its hottest on someone else's face").

>From what I understand, you're giving two *different* analyses of the two
sentences {latlh qabDaq...} and {qIbDaq...} which look to be grammatically
parallel. You're saying the superlative works one way in one sentence, and
another way in the other sentence, but you don't seem to acknowledge that
this is what you're doing. I'm not saying that you're wrong. It may very
well be that the superlative construction is more flexible than what's
described in TKD. (In fact, I think it is, which is the whole point of this
thread.) Where am I misunderstanding you?

(And also, I really don't get why "the fire is at its hottest (on someone
else's face)" *isn't* an accurate way to express that there is "ONE fire,
and the place where it is hottest is at someone else’s face". What exactly
is inaccurate about it? How would you disambiguate between your intended
meaning of "the fire is hottest (on someone else's face)" from "the fire is
hotter than anything else (on someone else's face)"?)

-- 
De'vID
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