tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Mar 31 21:04:56 1994
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Just bored
vIghitlh:
Sorry if this has already been suggested, but... what about
vIDallu'
? I.e., "(unspecified) is boring me".
mujang Guido#1:
That's stretching it. TKD's addendum has {quSDaq ba'lu''a'}, a {-lu'}
on an intransitive verb, so there's a canon example. But a *prefix* on
such a verb? Yipe.
Now, first consider what would happen if there were a definite subject
here: "IT bores me." Then according to your idea, it would come out
{muDal}.
vIjang:
(Sigh.) Here we go again. -lu' HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OBJECTS OR
TRANSITIVITY. "This suffix is used to indicate that the subject is
unknown, indefinite, and/or general." (TKD 4.2.5, p. 38.) As for
prefixes, I won't quote it; go read the section. My use of vI- is
exactly as specified by Okrand. -- That covers Guido#1's second
paragraph as well.
'ej mujang charghwI' je:
The problem is that {Dal} is intransitive. It means "be boring". If
we use {-moH} to make it transitive, we get "I am boring," or
"Someone/something causes me to be boring." That might not be
inappropriate, since bored people are often boring.
I know we've touched on this point as well. Okrand's glosses aren't
always to be relied on for indicating transitivity, since they are
trying to convey the basic meaning of the word in a very brief phrase
or single word with NO grammatical notes except part of speech. I
think the word we were discussing was Daj 'interesting, be
interesting', but it might have been something else. The point is
that Klingon verbs seem to be able to take objects or not, just
according to whether it makes sense for them to do so. There is no
attested grammatical distinction between "transitive" and
"intransitive" verbs; the prefixes used when there is no object are
also used "when an object is possible, but unknown or vague." (TKD
4.1.1, p. 33.) Boredom is an emotion, and therefore has an
experiencer; what would make better sense as an object than the
experiencer? "It bores me": muDal. "Something (unspecified) bores
me": vIDallu' (see answer to Guido#1). And that's close enough to
"I'm bored" for me.
ghItlh je:
Basically, being bored does not sound like an especially common
Klingon trait, since boredom usually implies laziness, since a bored
person is one who expects the world to do something interesting for
them instead of digging in and doing something interesting to a boring
situation. IMESHO.
QoQlaw' pojvam. ('ach pob SIghbe'.)
-- marqem
Mark A. Mandel
Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
320 Nevada St. : Newton, Mass. 02160, USA : [email protected]
P.S.: This document was dictated with DragonDictate v2.0. Net typing
speed was 11 words per minute (including time taken to think, include
quoted sections, and add tlhIngan Hol by hand). 90% of the words were
recognized correctly. 5% were on the list of alternate possibilities
and were selectable with a single command, 3% required me to spell at
least one letter, and 2% (8, such as "transitivity") were new to my
DragonDictate vocabulary.