tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 14 12:43:05 1995
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Re: ye and thee
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: ye and thee
- Date: Tue, 14 Feb 95 15:43:03 EST
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>; from "Mark J. Reed" at Feb 13, 95 5:07 pm
According to Mark J. Reed:
>
> "William H. Martin" <[email protected]> writes:
> \ tlhIngan Hol DajatlhlaHbe'chugh vaj qatlh naDev SoHtaH?
> ^^^^^^^^^
> Is it considered legal to use -chugh and vaj together like this?
If it is not considered legal, then a lot of people need to go
back and rewrite a lot of text. {vaj} is also translated as
"then", which fits quite well in this case.
> In this case, we have -chugh turning a sentence into an adverbial;
You are the first person I've ever heard express this
grammatical construction in this way. {-chugh} turns a sentence
into an adverbial? That would tend to make even more
controversial a tendency I don't like, which is to place
{-chugh} constructions AFTER the main verb. I'll be interested
to hear other opinions on this.
> further
> modifying the main sentence with "vaj" seems at least redundant, if not wrong.
> Something like the English
>
> *"If you do not speak Klingon, so why do you remain here?"
"If you cannot speak Klingon, then why are you here?" I think
the "if/then" construction has been around a while, at least in
English. If that is ungrammatical, then I guess I've managed to
go most of 40 years without being corrected before.
Congratulations! As to whether or not Klingon considers such a
thing to be grammatical ... gee, I wish I had my
canon-searching software up and running. I'm pretty sure all
the merchants say, {bIje'be'chugh vaj bIHegh}, which seems to
violate your rule as well. Perhaps you speak Klingon better
than Okrand, too?
> It would seem to make more sense to me to use one or the other, but
> not both; in the "vaj"-only form, it would be two sentences:
>
> tlhIngan Hol DajatlhlaHbe'chugh qatlh naDev SoHtaH?
>
> tlhIngan Hol DajatlhlaHbe'. vaj qatlh naDev SoHtaH?
The second sentence pair sounds perfectly valid. The first
sounds like you left out the {vaj} but most people would
probably understand you despite the omission.
> I dunno. "-chugh vaj" just feels wrong to me.
It feels right to me, and apparently to Okrand and a lot of
other Klingonists.
> -marqoS
>
> --
> Mark J. Reed
> Email: [email protected] - Voice: +1 404 315 6296 x158 - Fax: +1 404 315 0293
> SecureWare, Inc. / 2957 Clairmont Rd Suite 200 / Atlanta GA 30329-1647
charghwI'
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