On 9/1/2017 11:32 AM, demonchaux.aurelie wrote:

Thank you all for your replies and thoughts on this !

HIq qIj reghuluS 'Iw HIq ghap jab

  They serve Black Ale or Regulan bloodwine. (CK)

{A B ghap jab} “they serve them” not {lujab} “they serve it”


This is a great example, and I think this gives us the solution, thank you for digging it up!

I was convinced that if A and B were both singular, "A B ghap" would be considered singular when choosing the verb prefix, and that's why I thought joq might be singular in those cases, and I couldnt choose between singular or plural. But this proves the contrary !

So, to sum up, whether A and B are singular or plural, and whether we use je or ghap, A + B + je / ghap is always plural.

Logically, A + B + joq is thus also always  plural !

So the correct sentence in my example is:
vIraS Hol tlhIngan Hol joq DIghojnIS

tuQaHmo' Satlho' :)

It's an interesting data point, but I wouldn't jump to that conclusion. Okrand forgets the prefix lu- often enough that he even points out that Klingons forget lu- more than any other prefix.

Then there's this example from HolQeD 12:2, which seems to contradict your analysis:

naQ megh'an 'er'In ghap yI'uch
grasp either end of the stick

The words 'er'In and megh'an are definitely intended to be singular here. If a ghap construction always got interpreted as plural, the verb should have been tI'uch, but it wasn't. And yes, sometimes Okrand forgets to use tI- and uses yI- instead. So we have two contradictory conclusions, each of which is based on examples with grammatical rules that Okrand commonly gets wrong.

Finally, even in English we don't use one consistent rule. Either Bob or Linda are coming over. A finicky grammarian would complain that the verb should have been is; nobody else would even have noticed. I could easily see a native English speaker, constructing a Klingon sentence, following the same fuzzy rules.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

_______________________________________________
tlhIngan-Hol mailing list
tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org
http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org