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- "yopwaH bID"
5 Comments
yopwaH bIDwIj yISop. The head noun, the thing that the object actually is, is the final noun. Any other nouns in the noun phrase are just modifiers of the final noun. The word for shorts in Klingon is a half, but a specific kind of half: a pants half.
yopwaHwIj bID would mean half of my pants.
Since yopwaH bID does not seem to be in any Klingon dictionaries then it must not be a fixed noun expression so bID is still a verb thus yopwaH must take the noun suffix. I think it is a more conservative and safer position to resist putting noun suffixes on verbs especially given that there are potentially thousands and more times that we need to use verbs adjectivally with nouns to create vocabulary we are missing. It might start to get a bit messy to start treating these cases as some type of fixed noun phrase and thus affixing the noun suffixes to the verb. In a language, it takes a long time of continuous and frequent use before something's proper grammatical place is ignored in favor of some other usage.
457
{bID} is a noun. {yopwaH bID} is defined with the new words coined for "Talk now, learn Klingon". Not sure why it's missing from Hol 'ampaS, but it is listed on the KLI's new words list.
Thanks, that is right. I don't know why I was thinking of it as a verb. Of course it is a noun. I must have been imagining something like "be half". I think I tried to make a problem and the only way was to make it a verb because if they are both nouns there is no problem. When both are nouns wouldn't the noun suffix definitely always automatically go on bID due to its placement/role? Are there any exceptions to this (besides types 5 I mean)?
The more curious thing is why is it yopwaH bID instead of bID yopwaH. I guess maybe it is just quirky to have them be your halves of the pants type rather than your pants of the half type. It is a bit cute. I am wearing my halvsies. Then the question is whether it is your pants halfsie or your dress halfsie. I like it. This language is fun. I don't know if this sort of fun stuff happens by accident or design but it is nice. Thanks for making me think about something else in the language that I had not given notice.
