Actually, the interesting part is that he starts with a main verb, then goes on to list locatives that apparently apply to the previously stated verb, suggesting that this must be poetry, since it defies all norms for Klingon grammar. We’d be hard pressed to find another example where he does this. It fits the English translation pretty well, but it’s not grammatical in Klingon. Locatives don’t follow the verbs to which they apply. So it doesn’t look like a great precedence-setting example for a verb in the middle of a noun-noun construction, unless we want to also accept that it’s fine for us to put locatives at the end of a sentence, now.

Your second example carries a lot more weight. Clearly, that is a noun-noun construction {romulusngan nejwI’} with the second noun being described by {Sambogh ‘ej HoHbogh}, which is also interesting, because it would be more typical of other canon to have said {romuluSngan Sambogh nejwI’ HoHbogh je.}, if I’m remembering the song lyrics correctly. Probably not.

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.




On May 1, 2019, at 3:09 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

On 5/1/2019 2:55 PM, SuStel wrote:


Thirdly, {maS SaqmeH Qu’} is ungrammatical because you can’t put a verb in the middle of a noun-noun possessive construction.

Says who? SaqmeH Qu' is a noun phrase, and noun phrases can count as the "noun" parts of a noun-noun construction. Are you saying that if I have a pe'meH taj cutting knife, I can't talk about the jonwI' pe'meH taj engineer's cutting knife?

Here's another unambiguous counterexample:

loS... qIb HeHDaq, 'u' SepmeyDaq Sovbe'lu'bogh lenglu'meH He ghoSlu'bogh retlhDaq 'oHtaH.
It waits... on the edge of the galaxy, beside a passage to unknown regions of the universe (SkyBox 99)

The interesting part is He ghoSlu'bogh retlhDaq beside a passage, next to a way which one follows. Here you have clearly have He ghoSlu'bogh passage, way which one follows modifying retlhDaq at the area next to, where a verb comes between the component nouns.

And of course there's the infamous romuluSngan Sambogh 'ej HoHbogh nejwI' Romulan hunter-killer probe, a device made by Romulans, not one which hunts and kills Romulans. A noun-noun construction where one of the component noun phrases is Sambogh 'ej HoHbogh nejwI'. Clearly, you can put a lot of non-nouns between terms in a noun-noun construction.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name
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