A conversation on DuoLingo got me thinking. Okrand said long ago that he could not get the head noun of a relative clause to fit anywhere except as the subject or object of that clause. We accept this as meaning Klingon doesn't allow this, though all Okrand really said was he couldn't see how to do it.

Consider the text of The Klingon Dictionary: "The whole construction (relative clause plus head noun), as a unit, is used in the sentence as a noun." I don't know about you, but this is not the mental image of relative clauses I have in my head. I imagine the main clause as a line, the head noun "pinned" to its place on that line, and the relative clause dangling off of the pinned head noun. But the text of TKD may suggest a different picture: the head noun plus verbal clause may be an enclosed package, no dangling, and whatever is part of the relative clause is isolated from interaction with the main clause. The main sentence, in other words, doesn't care what part the relative clause is the head noun; all it cares about is that something called "relative clause" is acting as a noun in a particular spot.

For example, if Duj vIleghpu'bogh ship which I saw is said to be equal to X, then we can insert it into a main clause vIngu'laH I can identify it like so: X vIngu'laH I can identify X. As far as the main clause is concerned, X is a black box, internally any noun phrase it wants to be.

So, let's suppose we start with a phrase, DujDaq jIHaw' I flee on a ship. Let's us further suppose... and bear with me here... that we don't have to make the head noun the subject or object of the relative clause. What if we can say DujDaq jIHaw'bogh ship on which I flee. Being the only noun in the clause, it's the only candidate for head noun. Let's suppose that it is. Just suppose.

Now just take the noun phrase as a black box and stick it into the main sentence, vIngu'laH I can identify it. We get: DujDaq jIHaw'bogh vIngu'laH I can identify the ship in which I fled. As far as the main sentence goes, this is not a locative, just a regular noun phrase.

Yes, yes, I realize that the listener has no idea that DujDaq jIHaw'bogh is supposed to be a unit and that I'm not actually identifying something while I'm on a ship. I remember that Okrand didn't agree to this in his interview. All I'm saying is, it doesn't actually contradict TKD, and Okrand didn't actually say you can't do it. The phrasing used in TKD makes such a construction not completely impossible.

There's one major problem with this idea: if you need to use main-sentence syntactic suffixes on the relative clause, you have to attach them to the head noun, which means the main sentence does see the inner parts of the relative clause, so it's not really a black box after all.

Note: I'm not advocating for this idea here. I'm just publicly speculating. The Ship In Which I Fled Problem is one of those things that I constantly run up against and would like to pound into the ground.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name