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