tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 09 12:02:39 1995

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Re: }} {-wI'} on sentences

>From: [email protected]
>Date: Tue, 8 Aug 1995 16:00:34 -0400

>ghunchu'wI' juqaD:
>> Is {-wI'} on a complete sentence really as bad as you make it
>> out to be? I hope to hear from others regarding this.

I don't know if I can weigh in on this and give a clear ruling.  I've long
noticed the resemblance of N V-wI' to N-N; I think this even came up a long
time ago the first time we haggled about prefixes on -wI' words.  I'm not
sure it's a coincidence that the two possibilities exist; Klingon often
structures things so that the head is last, and prior elements modify it:
So if you think of a sentence as being about the Subject, the Subject is
modified by the Verb, which says that the Subject is engaged in doing
something, and in turn the Verb, or the combination of Subject+Verb, may be
modified by the Object.  So you can think of a Klingon sentence as
"Captain.  Hitting is associated with the Captain.  A prisoner is
associated with the Captain's hitting.  This is NOT the "right" way to
think of Klingon structure, but it does indicate the prevalence of this
"head-last" way of thinking in Klingon.

So is "N V-wI'" a noun-noun construction, or "-wI'" attached to a sentence?
I don't know that I can say.  It may indeed have begun as either, or both
(depending on the particular phrase).  Maybe Klingon once had case-endings
for possession but not for sentence structure (as English does), and
because of the way "N V-wI'" sentences-with--wI' forms were made, as the
case-markers dropped out the N-N construction followed the same pattern.
Possibly the other way 'round, though that seems less likely.

I also don't know that saying it's a sentence with -wI' needs to imply that
it can take adverbs.  Sure, it would be logical... but that kind of stretch
is often not made in many languages.  I wouldn't consider it an incredible
copout to say that it's a sentence and then invent a exception that says
you can't use adverbs on it anyway.

It may depend on the situation.  Perhaps some N V-wI' constructions are
very entrenched and would never take an adverb inside them (like Hergh
QaywI'), but some nonce constructions could do it in colloquial speech
(cf. English advertising: The quicker picker-upper, putting "-er" on both
elements of the compound verb "to pick up".  Not exactly grammatical, but
understood widely).

Just some random thoughts.


~mark

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