[tlhIngan Hol] Noun-noun constructions with relative clauses

[Will Martin]

The limits of the weight that a Relative Clause can carry has been deeply explored, and the answer always comes back that if the Relative Clause isn’t easily understood, use two sentences, instead. {DaH be’ leghtaH loD. be’vam paq blahblahblah} or {DaH be’ leghtaH HoD. loDvam paq blahblahblah}.

In your wildest dreams, Okrand might explain that in examples like you are imagining, the {-‘e’} belongs to the Relative Clause and not the Noun-Noun construction, so that if you zoom out to the Noun Noun construction, compressing the Relative Clause into its Head Noun, the {-‘e’} is thereby consumed and no longer counts in the Noun-Noun construction, so it doesn’t break the rule.

Until that happens, rules is rules, and you can use your construction and maybe be speaking gibberish. Or Klingon. We can’t know.

pItlh

charghwI’ ‘utlh
(ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)




> On Oct 31, 2021, at 11:30 AM, luis.chaparro at web.de wrote:
> 
> In a noun-noun construction *noun* actually means *noun phrase*, so that we can have noun-noun constructions with nouns + adjectival verbs or relative clauses, right?
>  
> *be' val paq* - the book of the intelligent woman
> *DaH be' vIleghtaHbogh paq* - the book of the woman I'm seeing now
>  
> However, in TKD it's stated that in a noun-noun construction only the second noun can take a Type 5 suffix (well, I suppose it would be better to say *only the last noun*, since noun-noun constructions with multiple nouns / noun-phrases are possible). But since *-'e'* is a Type 5 suffix, how could we disambiguate this sentence?:
>  
> *DaH be' leghtaHbogh loD paq* - the book of the man who is seeing the woman now / the book of the woman the man is seeing now
>  
> Putting *-'e'* on *be'* or *loD* wouldn't be allowed. Or is there an exception?
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