Thank you both mIp'av and SuStel for your replies!

When I started the thread, I had in mind more the ability of the translator, not the "translatability" of texts, but this is indeed a very interesting question!

I'd like to contribute a few remarks to the debate after reading your messages.

1/ I would avoid writing {ghItlhvam mughlu'meH laH}, I think its meaning may be ambiguous or at least not very easy to figure out, perhaps because a reader may be tempted to associate the noun "laH" with the indefinite subject conveyed by {-lu'}. Also, a manuscript in and of itself cannot have "abilities".

2/ But there can exist a "possibility" for a manuscript to be translated. What do you make of {ghItlhvam mughlu'meH DuH} ?

>> As in: ghItlhvam mughlu'meH DuH tu'lu'be' = There is no possibility to translate this manuscript / it is impossible to translate this manuscript

>> of course a simpler (safer) way to say it could be {ghItlhvam mughlaH pagh} = no one can translate this manuscript

3/ For the sentence "no one has figured out how to translate this manuscript", I would not consider using {laH}:

{ghItlhvam mughlu'meH mIw Sam pagh} = no one has found a way for this manuscript to be translated

Note: when the English uses "how" in a sentence, I often consider {mIw} as a possible translation.

4/ As for the contexts when we refer to the ability as pertaining to a specific person (the subject), while in terms of semantics the 2 options seem identical, there may be some situations where it is grammatically preferrable to choose one over the other.

Example: for "they are studying the linguists' ability to translate", I would use {mughlaHghach}:

Hol tejpu' mughlaHghach luHaD

This is because, with {mughmeH laH}, placement of {Hol tej} may be problematic and possibly ambiguous to the reader:

(?) Hol tejpu' mughmeH laH luHaD: may be misunderstood as "They are studying the ability to translate the linguists"

(?) mughmeH Hol tejpu' laH luHaD: I am uncomfortable with introducing anything between {laH} and its purpose clause - not to mention the fact that {Hol tej} is aready composed of 2 nouns. So which noun goes with "mughmeH"? It could be misunderstood as "They are studying the ability of the scientists (studying) the language-for-translating".

nuq boQub? :)

~ghItlhjaj

PS: SuStel, thanks for the link above to the post by Dr Okrand, very insightful!

2018-05-16 17:52 GMT+02:00 SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name>:

On 5/16/2018 11:24 AM, Ed Bailey wrote:

So you'd accept that the purpose clause in a noun phrase can have an object?

Sure. What else do you think is happening with qaSuchmeH 'eb? It's SoH qaSuchmeH jIH 'eb.

This makes it more like a relative clause.

All of the subordinate clauses can have subjects and objects. It's just the purpose clauses that are exceptional in that they can also NOT have subjects and objects. We simply don't know exactly when you can and can't drop the arguments. In general, purpose clauses attached to verbs have them and purpose clauses attached to nouns don't, but both sides of that are broken from time to time.

Unlike a relative clause, the head noun of a purpose clause is NOT the subject or object of the clause.

It would be interesting to compare nouns with purpose clauses to relative clauses. There are enough similarities that one could stumble over the differences. One difference is that the purpose clause must still precede that which it modifies, correct?

Correct. A purpose clause precedes its head noun, while a relative clause puts its head noun into a subject or object position within the clause.

And the topic marker can make either subject or object be the head noun of a relative clause, but I don't get that this could happen with a purpose clause.

There would be no point. Since the head noun is not inside the purpose clause, there is nothing to disambiguate.

Let's bring this back to Aurélie's original point: would ghItlhvam mughlaHghach chavlu'pu' be a better way to say "The ability to translate this manuscript has been achieved" (colloquially, "They've figured out how to translate this manuscript")?

Now you're trying to add an object to a verb before a -ghach is applied, and that's a whole other kettle of fish. I don't personally subscribe to the idea that -ghach'd verbs can be given arguments before the -ghach is applied; Okrand declined to comment on this possibility when given the chance. Start with a root verb, add one or more suffixes, then add -ghach. That's it. No prefixes, no objects, no subjects, no other syntactic nouns or clauses go inside the scope of the -ghach.

What you have above says This manuscript's ability to translate has been achieved. That is, the manuscript has been working to be able to translate something, and now it has the ability to do so. What the manuscript is going to translate, or how it's going to translate it, is not said.

It seems like a good choice to me, since -ghach nominalizes in such a way that mughlaHghach encompasses both "ability to translate" and "ability to be translated."

IT DOES NOT. mughlaHghach means only ability to translate. To mean ability to be translated, you'd need a verb X that means be translated, and then you could say XlaHghach. That verb is not mugh.

Are you getting mixed up by the word translate? In English you can say things like "I can't say that; it doesn't translate." That's not mugh. The message does not mugh; it gets mugh'd. Klingon mugh is transitive.

-- SuStel http://trimboli.name
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