tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Dec 09 08:26:52 1996
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Re: KLBC: "Sarek" translation
>Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 15:23:43 -0800
>From: "David Trimboli" <[email protected]>
>
>December 07, 1996 11:43 AM, jatlh mIqIraH:
>
>> qa'ma'ragh: Sopta''a' 'ej tlhutlhta''a'?
>
>I haven't read the book, so I cannot be sure of the situation. You say the
>original was "He ate and drank?" This would be {Sop'a'? tlhutlh'a'?}. There
>are no aspect markers necessary to indicate past tense. Also, I don't think
>you should use the {'ej} conjunction with question words as you have. There's
>no rule against it, but the grammar doesn't seem to hold its own very well.
>It seems like you're simply trying to emulate the structure of the original in
>English. {Sop'a'? tlhutlh'a'?} "Did he eat? Did he drink?"
I also like the sound of "Sop'a'? tlhutlh'a'?" but I don't believe there's
any question about the grammatical fitness of "Sop'a' 'ej tlhutlh'a'?"
After all, they're sentences, right? And you join sentences with 'ej,
right? So what's the prob? To be sure, you feel like you want to put only
one -'a' on the pair, which I guess is why I like the version without the
conjunction better.
~mark