numbers and inherently plural nouns
jIjatlh vIneH: "we see three targets". DuH wa': wej ray' wIlegh DuH cha': wej ray' DIlegh nuq 'oH DuH lugh'e' ? DaH.. chaq jatlhqang vay': <<< < wej DoS DIlegh > yIlo'. >>> 'a {DoS} 'oHbe' QInvam meq'e'; inherently plural nouns 'oH QInvam meq'e'. ~ Qa'yIn
On 9/2/2020 9:16 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
jIjatlh vIneH: "we see three targets".
DuH wa':
wej ray' wIlegh
DuH cha':
wej ray' DIlegh
nuq 'oH DuH lugh'e' ?
DaH.. chaq jatlhqang vay': <<< < wej DoS DIlegh > yIlo'. >>>
'a {DoS} 'oHbe' QInvam meq'e'; inherently plural nouns 'oH QInvam meq'e'.
My answer to this question is the same as usual: if there's canon suggesting an answer, consider how significant the evidence is. If there is no canon suggesting an answer, we don't know the answer. I do not have the time right now to do an extensive search. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head. For my money, I'd go for *wej ray' wIlegh.* The targets are plural, so we use *ray'* instead of *DoS,* we count them with *wej,* and we treat the whole thing as grammatically singular with *wI-.* But I've noticed something interesting about how TKD presents plurals. It doesn't say *-pu', -Du', -mey* are the plural suffixes but they're optional. It says "plurality is indicated by a pronoun, whether a verb prefix... or a full word..., or by context." After a couple of paragraphs, it then says "it is never incorrect to add a plural suffix to a noun referring to more than one entity..." This is interesting because it presents Klingon plurals as not the default means of expressing plurality. Pronouns (including words and prefixes) are, followed by context, and only then followed by suffixes. But this is never the way we teach plurals: we always teach the suffixes, and THEN we say they're optional. We encourage their use by default, only dropping them when everything is clear. I wonder if this has been the wrong approach. It might be appropriate to use plural suffixes a lot less than we do. I'm sure an examination of canon would show tons of plural suffixes where they're simply not needed, and the idea of non-suffixed nouns being the plural default is not supported by the evidence. But all the same, it may be a good idea not to take the "use a suffix, but it's optional" approach for granted. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
Great response. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, but not recently. I think a lot of it can simply be a matter of personal writing (or speaking) “style”. If you ALWAYS use the plural suffix on any plural noun, that speaks loudly in terms of your intentional style, and it’s likely exceptional from the general norm. Similarly, if you always omit the plural suffixes, you are similarly adhering to a style that is probably exceptional. For myself, I make a point of using plural suffixes if I’m clarifying that something is plural when it’s not obvious or when the plurality of it is significant to my intended expression, and I tend to omit it any other time. It’s also possible to use a plural suffix to emphasize the “gender” of the plural noun (not sexual gender, but grammatical gender of “uses language/body part/anything else”. I don’t think it’s ever wrong to omit the plural suffix or to use it, for any specific utterance, though it can be confusing or vague in some cases to omit it, and just seems somewhat chatty and excessive to always use it. The revelation for me, given what you posted just now, is that it might actually be allowable and useful to use plural suffixes with plural/collective nouns. Consider: ray’pu’ ray’mey ray’Du’ In one word, you tell whether you are aiming at people, more specifically at certain body parts, or maybe just their ships. I mean, maybe I’m aiming at Romulans, or maybe I won’t even fire if I can’t get in a good head shot, or maybe I’m a pacifist, determined to shoot the weapons out of their hands, ‘cuz, hey, my disrupter doesn’t HAVE a STUN setting, right? You’ve just expanded my capacity to express with concise specificity. My day just improved. I’m smiling in my mask, prepared for a long walk home... charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.
On Sep 2, 2020, at 10:40 AM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 9/2/2020 9:16 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
jIjatlh vIneH: "we see three targets".
DuH wa': wej ray' wIlegh
DuH cha': wej ray' DIlegh
nuq 'oH DuH lugh'e' ?
DaH.. chaq jatlhqang vay': <<< < wej DoS DIlegh > yIlo'. >>>
'a {DoS} 'oHbe' QInvam meq'e'; inherently plural nouns 'oH QInvam meq'e'.
My answer to this question is the same as usual: if there's canon suggesting an answer, consider how significant the evidence is. If there is no canon suggesting an answer, we don't know the answer. I do not have the time right now to do an extensive search. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head.
For my money, I'd go for wej ray' wIlegh. The targets are plural, so we use ray' instead of DoS, we count them with wej, and we treat the whole thing as grammatically singular with wI-.
But I've noticed something interesting about how TKD presents plurals. It doesn't say -pu', -Du', -mey are the plural suffixes but they're optional. It says "plurality is indicated by a pronoun, whether a verb prefix... or a full word..., or by context." After a couple of paragraphs, it then says "it is never incorrect to add a plural suffix to a noun referring to more than one entity..."
This is interesting because it presents Klingon plurals as not the default means of expressing plurality. Pronouns (including words and prefixes) are, followed by context, and only then followed by suffixes. But this is never the way we teach plurals: we always teach the suffixes, and THEN we say they're optional. We encourage their use by default, only dropping them when everything is clear. I wonder if this has been the wrong approach. It might be appropriate to use plural suffixes a lot less than we do.
I'm sure an examination of canon would show tons of plural suffixes where they're simply not needed, and the idea of non-suffixed nouns being the plural default is not supported by the evidence. But all the same, it may be a good idea not to take the "use a suffix, but it's optional" approach for granted.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org <mailto:tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org> http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org <http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org>
On 9/2/2020 5:16 PM, Will Martin wrote:
I think a lot of it can simply be a matter of personal writing (or speaking) “style”. If you ALWAYS use the plural suffix on any plural noun, that speaks loudly in terms of your intentional style, and it’s likely exceptional from the general norm. Similarly, if you always omit the plural suffixes, you are similarly adhering to a style that is probably exceptional.
I'm not talking about whether or not you USE the suffixes, only whether Klingons think of suffixes FIRST when confronted with the concept of plural. TKD presents a bunch of examples. *yaS vImojpu'*//means only /I became an officer/ because context rules out me becoming multiple officers. *yaS DImojpu'* means only /We became officers/ because the pronomial prefix AND context rule out us becoming a single officer. *yaS jIH* means only /I am an officer/ because the pronoun AND context rule out me becoming multiple officers. *yaS maH* means only /We become officers/ because the pronoun AND context rule out us becoming a single officer. But when we get to *yaS mojpu'* we have to resort to external context. *gheSmeH tayvaD paw jav yaS. rInDI' tay, yaS mojpu'.* Now we have context, and we know that it means /They became officers./
I don’t think it’s ever wrong to omit the plural suffix or to use it, for any specific utterance, though it can be confusing or vague in some cases to omit it, and just seems somewhat chatty and excessive to always use it.
I'm not saying it is. It explicitly isn't. "Fortunately for students of Klingon, it is never incorrect to add a plural suffix to a noun referring to more than one entity, even in those cases where it is unnecessary to do so." I'm simply wondering whether Klingons may think of plural suffixes as optional to ADD to nouns rather than as optional to REMOVE.
The revelation for me, given what you posted just now, is that it might actually be allowable and useful to use plural suffixes with plural/collective nouns. Consider:
ray’pu’ ray’mey ray’Du’
In one word, you tell whether you are aiming at people, more specifically at certain body parts, or maybe just their ships.
No, these words don't take these suffixes, or at least TKD says they never do. I'm not sure why what I posted led you here, since I wasn't talking about this. If you want to distinguish speaking targets from body-part targets from other targets, you need to do so by description. The grammar won't do it for you. *ray'lIj 'oH ghotvetlh'e'. ray'Daq yIbach!* (And notice that context tells us that *ghotvetlh'e'* must also be plural because one person usually can't be multiple targets.) ** I daresay in most cases you'll have some context as to what your multiple targets are, and it won't be necessary to ask grammatical gender to distinguish this for you. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
why use {‘oH} if {ghot} is plural? Sent from my iPhone.
On Sep 2, 2020, at 7:16 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 9/2/2020 5:16 PM, Will Martin wrote: I think a lot of it can simply be a matter of personal writing (or speaking) “style”. If you ALWAYS use the plural suffix on any plural noun, that speaks loudly in terms of your intentional style, and it’s likely exceptional from the general norm. Similarly, if you always omit the plural suffixes, you are similarly adhering to a style that is probably exceptional. I'm not talking about whether or not you USE the suffixes, only whether Klingons think of suffixes FIRST when confronted with the concept of plural.
TKD presents a bunch of examples.
yaS vImojpu' means only I became an officer because context rules out me becoming multiple officers.
yaS DImojpu' means only We became officers because the pronomial prefix AND context rule out us becoming a single officer.
yaS jIH means only I am an officer because the pronoun AND context rule out me becoming multiple officers.
yaS maH means only We become officers because the pronoun AND context rule out us becoming a single officer.
But when we get to yaS mojpu' we have to resort to external context. gheSmeH tayvaD paw jav yaS. rInDI' tay, yaS mojpu'. Now we have context, and we know that it means They became officers.
I don’t think it’s ever wrong to omit the plural suffix or to use it, for any specific utterance, though it can be confusing or vague in some cases to omit it, and just seems somewhat chatty and excessive to always use it. I'm not saying it is. It explicitly isn't. "Fortunately for students of Klingon, it is never incorrect to add a plural suffix to a noun referring to more than one entity, even in those cases where it is unnecessary to do so." I'm simply wondering whether Klingons may think of plural suffixes as optional to ADD to nouns rather than as optional to REMOVE.
The revelation for me, given what you posted just now, is that it might actually be allowable and useful to use plural suffixes with plural/collective nouns. Consider:
ray’pu’ ray’mey ray’Du’
In one word, you tell whether you are aiming at people, more specifically at certain body parts, or maybe just their ships. No, these words don't take these suffixes, or at least TKD says they never do. I'm not sure why what I posted led you here, since I wasn't talking about this.
If you want to distinguish speaking targets from body-part targets from other targets, you need to do so by description. The grammar won't do it for you.
ray'lIj 'oH ghotvetlh'e'. ray'Daq yIbach!
(And notice that context tells us that ghotvetlh'e' must also be plural because one person usually can't be multiple targets.)
I daresay in most cases you'll have some context as to what your multiple targets are, and it won't be necessary to ask grammatical gender to distinguish this for you.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
On Sep 2, 2020, at 7:16 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
If you want to distinguish speaking targets from body-part targets from other targets, you need to do so by description. The grammar won't do it for you.
ray'lIj 'oH ghotvetlh'e'. ray'Daq yIbach!
The grammar of that sentence is doing it just fine. It is clearly indicating, in multiple ways, that the target is not a being capable of speech. It is very jarring for me to see {ghot} as the subject of such a sentence. It’s also weird to try to reconcile the singular pronoun with the claimed implication that it refers to a plural entity, but inherent plurals are weird in general when one tries to mix them with explicitly plural ideas. -- ghunchu'wI'
On 9/2/2020 11:47 PM, Alan Anderson wrote:
On Sep 2, 2020, at 7:16 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
If you want to distinguish speaking targets from body-part targets from other targets, you need to do so by description. The grammar won't do it for you.
*ray'lIj 'oH ghotvetlh'e'. ray'Daq yIbach!*
The grammar of that sentence is doing it just fine. It is clearly indicating, in multiple ways, that the target is not a being capable of speech. It is very jarring for me to see {ghot} as the subject of such a sentence.
It’s also weird to try to reconcile the singular pronoun with the claimed implication that it refers to a plural entity, but inherent plurals are weird in general when one tries to mix them with explicitly plural ideas.
My mistake, I should have written *ray' ghaH ghotvetlh'e'.* The grammar of THAT sentence is doing it just fine, but that's the sentence that's there purely to explain that the target is a being capable of using language. I added it specifically BECAUSE the grammar of that sentence shows the gender. My point is that you can't try to say something like *ray'Daq yIbach* and add grammar like *-pu'* simply to show the gender of the noun. As for using a singular pronoun with an inherently plural noun representing beings capable of using language, we just got confirmation by Okrand that this is the case. Said by De'vID in a message on August 16, "I'm working with Dr. Okrand on a 2nd edition of the paq'batlh and can confirm that the correct pronoun for {negh} is {ghaH}. (Incorrect uses of {chaH} and verb prefixes which incorrectly treated {negh} as grammatically plural will be corrected in the 2nd ed.)" I don't remember whether we have evidence that the pronoun of a "to be" sentence is based on the first noun or the topic noun, but I believe it needs to be the first noun, not the topic noun. We're talking about those people. *ray' ghaH*/they're the targets./ Who are the targets? *ghotvetlh'e'. *On the other hand, in a sentence like *pa'DajDaq ghaHtaH la''e',* the pronoun is based on the topic noun, although "to be" sentences with locatives seem to work a little differently than others. So if it has to be *ray'lI' chaH ghotvetlh'e',* that's fine; it doesn't change the point of my post. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
SuStel:
I don't remember whether we have evidence that the pronoun of a "to be" sentence is based on the first noun or the topic noun
pa'logh pabvam wIrIchpu' ! http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/2018-October/008804.html ~ Qa'yIn
On 9/3/2020 10:02 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
SuStel:
I don't remember whether we have evidence that the pronoun of a "to be" sentence is based on the first noun or the topic noun pa'logh pabvam wIrIchpu' !
http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/2018-October/008804.html
*maj.* Then make it *ray' chaH ghotvetlh'e'. ray'Daq yIbach! */Those people are the targets. Shoot at the targets!/ *ray'* does not have its gender shown grammatically here, but context makes it clear. This is the effect I was going for. ** -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
QIn tlheghvam vInaQmoHmeH, QInvam lubopbogh paq'batlh mu'tlhegh vIrev: DaH mararchuq mayIntaHvIS wa' Dol bIH qa''e' porgh'e' je We are now connected, Spirit and body are one, Until our time comes. ~ Qa'yIn
participants (4)
-
Alan Anderson -
mayqel qunen'oS -
SuStel -
Will Martin