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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/25/2021 10:12 AM, SuStel wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:d17eb9d2-6e2f-7fe1-9b7e-c65d222688da@trimboli.name">
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/25/2021 9:59 AM, Will Martin
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:94DEC356-514C-4897-92FC-EE9133EBA3F3@mac.com">
<div class="">I was with you 100% until that last detail of your
interpretation. I don’t get 5,000 out of “be few, be several,
be a handful”, regardless of context. I quite honestly think
you’ve gone to one extreme at least as far as I went to the
other, and I doubt there’s anything like justification for
that extreme interpretation in either canon or conversation
with Okrand.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">That’s not claiming that I’m right and you are
wrong. I’m merely stating that I am nothing like convinced
that 5,000 of anything could be {puS} in anything but a
comparative grammatical construction. Outside of that very
fossilized construction, it quite sincerely does not feel like
the right word.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>You have misread my message. I said I have 5,000 soldiers, you
have 600 soldiers, and your 600 soldiers are <b>puS.</b> Yes,
your 600 are few only in comparison to my 5,000, but that's my
point: the word doesn't only mean three to five.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if I have 600 soldiers assigned to guard a
single prisoner, there is no way you can call them <b>puS.</b>
It's relative and context-dependent.<br>
</p>
<p><b>puS,</b> like <i>few,</i> is one of those words that only
has a definite meaning in context. Another is <b>law'.</b> How
many soldiers are <b>law'?</b> That depends on what you need
them for and what they're up against.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here, by the way, are the canonical, non-comparative uses of <b>puS</b>
that I'm aware of:</p>
<p><b>pIpyuS pach DaSop DaneHchugh pIpyuS puS DaghornIS.<br>
</b><i>If you want to eat pipius claw, you'll have to break a few
pipiuses.</i> (TKW)<br>
</p>
<p><b>qagh, ro'qegh'Iwchab, targh tIq Sop 'e' lungIl Humanpu' puS.<br>
</b><i>Few humans dare to eat gagh, rokeg blood pie, or heart of
targ.</i> (Skybox S21)</p>
<p><b>veymey puS neH chenmoHlu'pu'<br>
</b><i>Limited Edition</i> (Klingon Monopoly)</p>
<p>The first of these is very vague. You could break three to five
pipiuses to eat pipius claw, but then again, you could break two
or six. The <b>puS</b> is there to tell us that you probably
won't want to break just one.<br>
</p>
<p>The second one doesn't mean that only three to five humans have
dared to eat these things. It means humans who dare to eat these
things are rare. Compared to the total number of humans, the
number of those who dare to eat these things is relatively small.<br>
</p>
<p>In the third case, I'm pretty sure they made more than three to
five copies of the limited edition Klingon Monopoly. The <b>puS</b>
is telling us that, compared to a normal print run, there are only
a small number of copies of this edition.</p>
<p>That's what <b>puS</b> means. It means more than one, but
significantly less than an average amount, whatever "average"
means in the given context.<br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
SuStel
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://trimboli.name">http://trimboli.name</a></pre>
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