On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 3:53 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

Is it any more ambiguous than the English Romulan hunter-killer probe? Is that a hunter-killer probe that hunts and kills Romulans or a hunter-killer probe of Romulan make? Why isn't it a hunter-killer Romulan probe? Doesn't hunter-killer Romulan probe sound just plain WRONG to you, even though it can't be misinterpreted?

I do think the English phrase "Romulan hunter-killer probe" is potentially ambiguous. As you point out, trying to clarify the meaning simply by shifting a word doesn't sound right because of how English arranges adjectives. If I were worried that context wouldn't make things clear, I'd probably have to include other words entirely: "a hunter-killer probe built by Romulans", "a probe that hunts and kills Romulans". Both of those phrasings include relative clauses, and are a little more complex than a noun phrase. So I would probably be willing to put up with a little more grammatical ambiguity before I decide to move away from the simpler four-noun phrase.

This isn't the case with the Klingon, though. We don't know what sounds wrong to native speakers, and clearing up the ambiguity simply requires moving a noun, rather than rephrasing the idea entirely into a somewhat more complex form. It's less of a hassle to remove the ambiguity than it is in the English.

The word order and potential ambiguity is exactly the same as in English. The only difference is that Klingon uses relative clauses where English uses nouns.

romuluSngan Sambogh 'ej HoHbogh nejwI' is known to be good. Potential ambiguity: it could be a probe that hunts and kills Romulans.
Romulan hunter-killer probe is known to be good. Potential ambiguity: it could be a probe that hunts and kills Romulans.
Sambogh 'ej HoHbogh romuluSngan nejwI' is not known to be good. Potential ambiguity: none.
hunter-killer Romulan probe seems to be wrong because of the way English orders adjectives. Potential ambiguity: none.

Sambogh 'ej HoHbogh nejwI' luchenmoHpu'bogh romuluSngan
romuluSngan Sambogh 'ej romuluSngan HoHbogh nejwI'

I really don't see the increase in complexity. Yes, you've got to conjoin those relative clauses with 'ej, but in English you've got to use special punctuation or emphasis to indicate the special status of the phrase hunter-killer: it's not a killer of hunters; the words hunter and killer are given equal status in the phrase.

It's perfectly fine if you have a preference. It's just that your preference doesn't seem to be borne out in at least one example, and might be unlikely given the English bias of the creator of canon. I don't think "removes some ambiguity" is sufficient cause to go against the grain. But if you wrote quvHa'moHbogh 'ej QeHmoHbogh verengan qID instead of verengan quvHa'moHbogh 'ej QeHmoHbogh qID, I wouldn't bat an eyelash.

Okrand sometimes breaks out of a strictly English way of thinking with relative clauses. When we first got Klingon for the Galactic Traveler, we got the phrase SuDbogh Dargh 'ej wovbogh, and this disturbed a lot of people. It wasn't completely clear at that time just what the rules were for conjoining dependent clauses, but even accepting that, most people wanted to see SuDbogh 'ej wovbogh Dargh. Some actually declared that they would not be using the new form. But it actually makes perfect sense, if you remember the rules of Klingon sentences (which apply to all the verbal clauses): if you're going to repeat a subject or an object in the second sentence, you can elide the second instance of that subject or object. That's all that's happening in SuDbogh Dargh 'ej wovbogh: applying Klingon sentence rules regardless of how one would approach the phrase in English. And it demonstrates how Klingon doesn't mind redundancy: it would be perfectly all right to say SuDbogh Dargh 'ej wovbogh Dargh in the same place, and it's all one conjoined relative clause.