On Mon, 13 Jun 2022 at 22:56, Ed Bailey <bellerophon.modeler@gmail.com> wrote:

On Monday, June 13, 2022, Iikka Hauhio <fergusq@protonmail.com> wrote:
Is it possible to use Hoch after a countable singular noun? Like chab Hoch vISop I eat the whole cake (I've seen some use naQ, but I've understood that it is wrong, as the cake is "whole" before I eat it regardless of whether I eat all of it or just a part).

Iikka "fergusq" Hauhio
------- Original Message -------
On Monday, June 13th, 2022 at 20.26, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:

I would jump in here just to point out that cake in English is also a mass noun, so it should be fine unless {chab} is not used as a mass noun in Klingon.

I just realised that may be support for {Hoch} after a countable singular noun, but with some caveats, in {tera' vatlh DIS poH cha'maH wej HochHom}. I gave Dr. Okrand a list of all prior usages of {Hoch} (including {HochHom}) in our discussion about {Hoch}. He confirmed that {Hoch} (or {HochHom}) after an uncountable noun like {nIn} or {QeH} would mean "all" (or "most") of the thing. He accepted that {HochHom} works like {Hoch}, following a noun. He didn't raise any objection to the implied {vatlh DIS poH Hoch}, but then there was a lot of stuff he didn't comment on so he might've just missed or ignored it as it wasn't relevant to the paq'batlh. But it seems that {vatlh DIS poH Hoch} would be okay for "all of the century". Among the questions he ignored was what {tlhIngan Hoch} or {tlhInganpu' Hoch} would mean, if anything. (But he ignored a lot of questions that had no direct bearing on the passages we were editing, even if they came up in the context of those passages.)

We know {from {qaStaHvIS wej puq poHmey...}) that {poH} is countable. ({puq poHmey} also appears in one passage in the 2ed.) But there's a complication, since {puq poHmey} is a kind of metonymy. That is, it refers to a group of people, even though the words actually describe a period of time (a "child period" or "offspring period"). So {puq poH Hoch[Hom]}, if it means anything, would not be "all [most] of the people of the generation" but "all [most] of the child period".

In any case, it seems that {poH Hoch} would be grammatical and means "all of the time period", even though {poH} is countable. However, {poH} (and in particular, {vatlh DIS poH}) is a sort of thing that seems like it's naturally divisible. If you divide a {poH}, you get a {poH} (even if it's a smaller one). That isn't true of {tlhIngan}, so {tlhIngan Hoch} might not be okay even if {poH Hoch} is. I think a {chab} is arguably more like {poH} than {tlhIngan}, as it's a thing that you would normally divide to share for eating (if you divide a {chab} you still get a thing that would be {chab}, unlike {tlhIngan}), so I think {poH Hoch} suggests that {chab Hoch} is okay. But that's just my opinion.

De'vID