Klingon Word of the Day for Tuesday, May 01, 2018
Klingon word: lo'laHghach
Part of speech: noun
Definition: value
Source:
This Klingon Word of the Day is brought to you by qurgh (qurgh(a)kli.org)
A conversation on DuoLingo got me thinking. Okrand said long ago that he
could not get the head noun of a relative clause to fit anywhere except
as the subject or object of that clause. We accept this as meaning
Klingon doesn't allow this, though all Okrand really said was he
couldn't see how to do it.
Consider the text of /The Klingon Dictionary:/ "The whole construction
(relative clause plus head noun), as a unit, is used in the sentence as
a noun." I don't know about you, but this is not the mental image of
relative clauses I have in my head. I imagine the main clause as a line,
the head noun "pinned" to its place on that line, and the relative
clause dangling off of the pinned head noun. But the text of TKD may
suggest a different picture: the head noun plus verbal clause may be an
enclosed package, no dangling, and whatever is part of the relative
clause is isolated from interaction with the main clause. The main
sentence, in other words, doesn't care what part the relative clause is
the head noun; all it cares about is that something called "relative
clause" is acting as a noun in a particular spot.
For example, if *Duj vIleghpu'bogh* /ship which I saw/ is said to be
equal to /X,/ then we can insert it into a main clause *vIngu'laH*/I can
identify it/ like so: /*X*/*vIngu'laH* /I can identify X./ As far as the
main clause is concerned, /X/ is a black box, internally any noun phrase
it wants to be.
So, let's suppose we start with a phrase, *DujDaq jIHaw'*/I flee on a
ship./ Let's us further suppose... and bear with me here... that we
don't have to make the head noun the subject or object of the relative
clause. What if we can say *DujDaq jIHaw'bogh*/ship on which I flee./
Being the only noun in the clause, it's the only candidate for head
noun. Let's suppose that it is. Just suppose.
Now just take the noun phrase as a black box and stick it into the main
sentence, *vIngu'laH*/I can identify it./**We get: *DujDaq jIHaw'bogh
vIngu'laH* /I can identify the ship in which I fled. /As far as the main
sentence goes, this is not a locative, just a regular noun phrase.
//
Yes, yes, I realize that the listener has no idea that *DujDaq
jIHaw'bogh* is supposed to be a unit and that I'm not actually
identifying something while I'm on a ship. I remember that Okrand didn't
agree to this in his interview. All I'm saying is, it doesn't /actually/
contradict TKD, and Okrand didn't /actually/ say you can't do it. The
phrasing used in TKD makes such a construction not completely impossible.
There's one major problem with this idea: if you need to use
main-sentence syntactic suffixes on the relative clause, you have to
attach them to the head noun, which means the main sentence /does/ see
the inner parts of the relative clause, so it's not really a black box
after all.
Note: I'm not advocating for this idea here. I'm just publicly
speculating. The Ship In Which I Fled Problem is one of those things
that I constantly run up against and would like to pound into the ground.
--
SuStel
http://trimboli.name
