tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Dec 13 10:55:07 1993
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something weird about imperatives
>From: [email protected]
>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 1993 14:10:01 -0400 (EDT)
>In Klingon, all a verbal prefix really does is allow the pronouns to be
>implicit. Therefore, I conclude that this carries over to imperatives,
>where it would be safe to say something like:
>{tengchaH yIlon tlhIH}. "All of you, abandon the station!"
I presume you mean without the "tlhIH", and you'd be right. {tengchaH
yIlon} makes perfect sense, tho there is the problem of "coincidental"
ambiguity with the singular 2nd-person imperative prefix, which is also
"yI-". But that's not at issue here. Or maybe you mean with the {tlhIH},
and that Klingon allows the pronouns to be explicit. Still no argument
from me.
>I've been thinking lately about those imperatives (I'm not sure what the
>accurate term for them is, but I know there must be one) that are translated
>as "Let's [do something]," where the subject is 1st person plural. This
>has normally been translated with a 1st-pl.subject prefix with the {-jaj}
>suffix. But {-jaj} acts more like the Optative mood, so the idea of a
>command is somehow lost.
>I would like to suggest, that if your intended meaning was "Let's abandon
>the station," it might come out better as:
>{tengchaH yIlon maH} rather than {tengchaH wIlonjaj}.
Doesn't hold any water to me. For one thing, it's as logical as saying
"let's use "vI-" for all verb conjugations"; even if Klingon has a
first-person imperative, why on Qo'noS should it be "yI-" and not "mo-" or
"ghu-" or anything else? What you're doing here is basically making up a
completely new verbal prefix. This is not changed by the fact that it
happens to resemble an existing one; you're using it in a totally new way.
Moreover, why does Klingon have to have a 1st-person imperative? Not every
language has one. Many don't, why must Klingon? English doesn't. Your
"Let's abandon" is an idiomatic construction using a *second*-person
command: You! whoever you are, permit us to abandon the station. That's
why it's "let *us*" in the objective case, because it's the object of the
verb "let". Near as I can tell from canonical examples, Klingon either
uses "-jaj", with the Optative functioning here for your imperative, (e.g.
maja'chuqjaj in the beginning of PK, admittedly spoken by a
less-than-perfect Klingon speaker), or simply the indicative: "maja'chuq",
"we will talk". I'm not sure, my tape isn't with me now, but I think we
see that in the sentence towards the end of PK, "'uQ maSoppu'DI',
maja'chuq"; "we'll talk/let's talk after dinner."
Maybe there was a 1st-person imperative in Old Klingon, but it probably had
its own prefixes; I wouldn't invent one now.
>I write this with NickNicholas in mind, since his broad linguistic knowledge
>seems appropriate to devise a clever solution to this.
Well, what do you think, Nick?
>Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos
~mark