On Sunday, 10 September 2017 20:03:30 BST SuStel wrote:

On 9/10/2017 8:39 AM, Jeremy Silver wrote:

On Saturday, 9 September 2017 13:52:00 BST SuStel wrote:

On 9/9/2017 4:31 AM, Jeremy Silver wrote:

On Friday, 8 September 2017 23:26:13 BST De'vID wrote:

On 6 September 2017 at 15:15, Jeremy Silver<jp.silver@tiscali.co.uk>

wrote:

Still, on a related note, I've been having problems recently trying to
figure out a reasonable way, with or without {ngIq}, to say "atom by
atom
[something happens]" and "cell by cell [something else happens]".

I presume this has to do with this DSC promo?
https://twitter.com/StarTrekNetflix/status/901134702622367748
"Atom by atom, they will silence us. Cell by cell, our souls shall
become theirs."

Indeed, for this exercise I think I settled on this version (which
omits
ngIq) for the whole promo text. Even after re-reading mayqel's thread
and
this one a few times, I'm/still/  not clear how to use ngIq for my own
purposes yet.

{nughoStaH chaH.
wa' HeySel ghIq latlh HeySel, nutammoH chaH.
wa' HanDI' ghIq latlh HanDI', qa'chaj moj qa'maj.
tlhIngan maHtaHmeH maghobnIS. potlhchu' meqvam.}

This doesn't work.*ghIq*  is an adverbial; it attaches to sentences, not
nouns.

Good point, but I'm not too sure it's the atoms that are doing the
silencing.

/They/ are doing the silencing. The atoms are being silenced. What else
does /atom by atom, they will silence us/ mean?

So how about this instead?:

{nughoStaH chaH.
latlh HeySel qa'taHvIS wa' HeySel, nutammoH chaH.

/While one atom replaces another atom, they silence us./

I have no idea what this means. I also don't like how *latlh* precedes
*wa';* you haven't introduced the *wa'* yet that can have a *latlh.*

Thanks for your further suggestions.

I think that neither of us really know what the original means as we're 
lacking a fair bit of context. But I'm going with the interpretation that the 
"they" which is approaching is the same "they" doing the silencing, and this 
"they" is not atoms or cells. I'll take a wild stab that it's some species, 
say Humans approaching, that will be causing some molecular/cellular 
alteration to change the look of the Klingon species.

My version doesn't say that the cells are doing the silencing. I said ngIq HeySelmaj tammoH they silence our atoms one by one. I didn't need to define who they are; I just made the atoms the object of the sentence.

I could swap the clauses to {wa' HeySel qa'taHvIS latlh HeySel}, and with this 
verb it could well work. But as I understand it, Klingon sentences are OVS, 
and {wa' HeySel} is the subject, is it not?

Sure, and in Klingon subjects come last. But you're thinking in English. In English, you'd say while one atom replaces another atom. You wouldn't say while another atom replaces one atom, because you haven't established another what? The same ordering happens in Klingon, only this time you mention the object first.

latlh HanDI' qa'taHvIS wa' HanDI', qa'chaj moj qa'maj.

/While one cell replaces another cell, our spirits become their spirits./

If this is supposed to suggest an agency by which our spirits become
their spirits, it fails to do so. It only suggests simultaneity. One
thing happens at the same time as another; one thing does not happen by
means of the other.

As I interpret the original phrase, I believe simultaneity is all I need to 
suggest. We have nothing in the original, that I can tell, that suggests 
agency specific to the atoms or cells. It seems to be just events/mutation/
disease happening, but I am frequently wrong.

I didn't suggest the cells have agency, and that was my point. Something else has agency: the they, whoever they are. But in my version, they are explicitly acting upon the atoms.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name