[tlhIngan Hol] {-Daq} and {-bogh} and {Sumbogh} and {Hopbogh}

[Will Martin]

Thanks for an excellent analysis. I thought that TKD referred to {-vo’} as locative and remember no mention of ablative, though that totally makes sense.

Once again, I see that Okrand missed a chance to make Klingon alien to English. [sigh]

pItlh

charghwI’ ‘utlh
(ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)




> On Feb 7, 2022, at 11:43 AM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
> On 2/7/2022 11:07 AM, Will Martin wrote:
>> Okay, weird idea: Change the Head Noun. {Ha’DIbaH vIlegh tawDaq jISumbogh}? “I, who am near the street, saw an animal.” Now, we don’t know where the animal is, which is a new problem.
> You'd need to explicitly use the jIH here. Dropping it causes a no-head-noun problem. Ha'DIbaH vIlegh tawDaq jISumbogh jIH. I don't think it works even like this, because tawDaq jISumbogh jIH is a nonrestrictive relative clause, unless you've been duplicated and you're explaining which jIH you're talking about. And in such a weird case, I might expect the jIH to be treated as a third-person entity, since it's not literally the speaker, even if it's identical to the speaker.
> 
> 
> 
>> {tawDaq Sumbogh Ha’DIbaH vIlegh juHwIjDaq jIHtaHbogh.} “I, who am in my house, saw an animal, which is near the street.” See how complicated this can get?
> Same issue. You need an explicit head noun (or pronoun), and you're using a nonrestrictive relative clause, unless there are duplicates of you.
> 
> 
> 
>> We don’t really have the mechanism to apply two separate locatives to the same verb, except for the special directional verbs that take locations as objects. {DujwIjDaq Qo’noS vIghoS.} I’m in my ship and I’m going to Kronos. Both the ship and Kronos are locations that involve the actions of going.
>> 
>> Can we do this with vision? Can I say, “I saw an animal in the street from my house,”? {juHwIjvo’ tawDaq Ha’DIbaH vIlegh.} Does this work?
> Yes, but juHwIjvo' is not a locative. It's an ablative. And ablatives with legh seem to be a special case in Klingon. But regardless, there's no problem in Klingon to simultaneously say that an action occurs at one location and away from another. Qo'noSvo' DujwIjDaq jIlenglaH'a'? Can I travel away from Kronos in my ship?
> 
> 
> 
>> Maybe. Do Klingons see vision as happening from a place to a place? Maybe, instead of seeing vision as something like an arrow shot from the seer to the target, Klingons trace the direction of light and see from the target to the viewer. Vision is then more like taking than like giving. That’s an alien idea to us, but hey, Klingons are aliens, right?
> Actually, I think the canonical pa'lIjvo' pagh leghlu' supports the idea that Klingons have a sight metaphor identical to that which we have in English.
> 
> In earlier times, it was commonly believed that sight operated by the eyes sending out some mysterious kind of beam to touch a target. Whatever this beam hit is what you'd see. The idea of the eyes collecting light to enable vision is a relatively recent discovery. It wasn't until the Renaissance that the mechanics of vision began to be understood. By then, the idea of sight operating by extramission had worked its way deeply into language, and it's ingrained in English today. A keen or sharp or piercing glance refers to the workings of that beam. You can feel eyes on you. One basic metaphor is that you can see from a place, worded as if your sight is something that leaves the place you're in.
> 
> We just have the one example in an early source that's known to be a bit grammatically wonky, so I'm not prepared to jump wholeheartedly into the claim that Klingon includes full-on extramission metaphors. It's just one possible explanation for the line.
> 
> -- 
> SuStel
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