On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 1:03 PM, mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:

Some time, a long time ago, in another thread I had asked more or less exactly the same questions.

Many replied, many things were said, no useful results were made, no light was shed on this matter, and finally, after we got even more confused than we were at the beginning of that thread, we agreed that since a lot of information with regards to the grammar of {ngIq} is still unknown, it is essentially useless.

I had a felling that would be the case. I'll have to go back and read that thread, see if it clears things up for me.

On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 1:22 PM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:

That makes the meaning of {ngIq} almost always ambiguous.

I disagree. It's fairly clear to me why the English translations are what they are. There may be ambiguity in that we don't fully know how to extend the use of {ngIq} *beyond* the examples, but I don't think the examples taken together are ambiguous.

I don't think the examples are ambiguous; I think {ngIq} is ambiguous. I think that because the examples are outright contradictory.

Why does {ngIq nuv luHoH} mean "They kill each person" instead of "They kill a single person"?

Because {ngIq} always deals with a collection of things. If it meant "They kill a single person", what happens to the others?

Why does {ngIq tonSaw' lo'} mean "In a single move" instead of "With each move"?

It means something like "with one move out of a collection of moves". The surrounding context makes it clear the translation should be "in a single move" rather than "in each move".

This is why I think the examples contradict each other. If it meant "He uses a single move", what happens to the other moves in that collection?

Based on the canon examples, if you make a single statement with {ngIq veng}, it means "in each city (out of a collection of cities)". If you make a series of (structurally identical) statements with {ngIq veng}, you're explicitly listing what's done "in a single city" (going through each city in the collection). The ambiguity is in what happens if you use it in another way (e.g., how similar do the list of sentences have to be for the "single one" meaning?).

I was reading the {ngIq tonSaw' lo'} sentences as three sentences about a single move: "In a single move he removed their hearts, restored his honor, and won the battle". It looks like you're reading them as three sentences about three different moves: "In one move he removed their hearts. Then he made another move and restored his honor. Then he made yet another move and won the battle."

Am I understanding you correctly?

On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 1:50 PM, ghunchu'wI' 'utlh <qunchuy@alcaco.net> wrote:

On Sep 6, 2017, at 11:21 AM, Brent Kesler <brent.of.all.people@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Why does {ngIq tonSaw' lo'} mean "In a single move" instead of "With each move"?

It doesn't "mean" that. It can be *translated* that way in the passage because of the context given along with it.

But {ngIq tonSaw' lo'} does mean something, right? Maybe it can't mean something on its own; maybe it needs some other sentence to complete the idea, the same way {A Q law'} needs {B Q puS}.

Even so, I argue that no matter the context, {ngIq} will always be ambiguous. It will never be clear whether it means "one thing out of a collection of things" or "every item in a collection taken one by one".

Like I said, I don't have the full context of paq'batlh available to me, but we can do a simple experiment:

Take one of the canon {ngIq} sentences.
Come up with some context to make it obvious that {ngIq} means "all of them, one by one".
Come up with some different context to make it obvious that {ngIq} means "just one thing out of a collection of things".

I say that's impossible, unless the context pretty much defines {ngIq} for you.

bI'reng

--
De'vID

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