SuStel:

> Legal possession and physical

> possession are not the same as

> grammatical possession. Klingon, like

> English, uses the concept of possession

> to represent relationships between

> people. My child (and puqwI') means the

> relationship between me and the person

> is that of parent (me) and child.

Yes, I understand. That's why I can't understand ghunchu'wI' saying that writing {be'wI'} could be a transgression.

{be'wI'} = my woman, which in hector's case means "my wife". If someone calls the woman he's married to "my wife/my woman" then does he transgress in some way?

It's because woman does not imply a relationship to anyone, so saying my woman is implying actual ownership. In contemporary English, that is. If someone calls a woman my woman, a lot of people will consider it to be socially regressive.

An ancient Trojan character might very well say equivalent of my woman in his own language and mean ownership, as that was the common practice at the time.

But you were offering these ancient rules as rules to live by today, so ghunchu'wI' said that if he referred to his wife as my woman, it would be unacceptable, because he does not own her.

We do hear Klingons on TV refer to woman in the possessive, though it's unclear how much control or ownership is involved. But you didn't offer the advice to Klingons, or even ancient Trojans; you offered it to modern humans, and primarily English-speaking ones at that.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name