On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 8:47 AM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

There is no all implicit in tlhIH. It plural you, but not necessarily all of you.

In many places that use "y'all", it's just a pronoun for plural you, though it's clearly derived from "you all". This is where the "all y'all" construction comes in, to mean "all of you (plural)". Anyway, DoS vIchIl.

Because maH Hoch appears to derive its meaning from the genitive noun-noun construction, not from possession. I don't think the area nouns work with pronouns the way they do because they are an exception to the rule; I think they work that way because they use a more general genitive way than possession. jIH 'em: it's not my area behind; it's the area behind narrowed down with me as a descriptor. I don't possess the area.

But again, not all area nouns take a separate pronoun: chanwIj "east of me, my area-eastward" is a perfectly fine construction. So far, I found two things talking about the distinction between pronoun-noun and noun-suffix constructions:

KGT (p. 24-25) says:

Using the possessive suffix construction when speaking ta' Hol will not lead to misunderstandings, but it will associate the speaker with the residents of Sakrej, which, depending on the political situation, may or may not be beneficial.

HolQeD 8:4 (p. 6-10) says

It is also possible (though the Sakrej folks tend not to do this) to use the full pronoun plus locative noun construction with the directional nouns: jIH chan "east of me" (literally <I area eastward>). There is a slight meaning difference between jIH chan, using the full pronoun, and chanwIj, using the possessive suffix, however. The construction with the full pronoun emphasize the pronoun (in this case "I," the speaker him-herself) as the reference point; the construction with the pronominal suffix is more neutral. Thus, chanwIj is <east of me, east of where I am, east of here> but jIH chan is <east of ME, to MY east>.

Both of these examples are about the locational and directional nouns, so they might not really apply here anyway. But they suggest that any non-stylistic distinction between the two forms isn't about the semantics of possessing an area, but an issue of emphasis.

There are a few examples I've found where the possessive suffix is used in a similar sort of genitive fashion: reH tay' ghot tuqDaj je (the tribe is not possessed by the person in question, it's just the tribe associated with them). QuvlIjDaq yIH tu'be'lu'jaj! (you don't own your coordinates, you're just at them). ghu'maj Dayajbe'law' (Azetbur and the other Klingons don't own the situation, they're just experiencing it).