tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jun 02 19:16:50 1996

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: be' & Ha', KLBC

tIm writes:
>I am afraid I'm a semi-plagiarist; p. 125 of TKW translates "Survival must be
>earned." as <yInIu'taH 'e' bajnISlu'>

Oh, the new word {baj}.  My apologies for not recognizing it; I looked in
my more convenient dictionary instead of my more complete one.

I hadn't noticed the {...'e' X-lu'} usage there; I wonder how Okrand will
explain when it is appropriate and when {net} is appropriate? :-)  By the
way, that's the suffix {-lu'} in the middle of {yInlu'taH}, spelled with
an "ell", not an "eye".

>  I substituted <Sov> for <yInIu'taH>,
>knowledge for survival.  Now I thought I was just making a noun for a noun
>swap, making the sentence "Knowledge must be earned".

You didn't replace a noun with a noun.  {yInlu'taH} is a *sentence*.  The
proverb is a "sentence as object" construction; the object of the second
sentence is the first sentence itself.  Literally, the proverb is saying
"One must earn that one continues to live."  In {Sov 'e' bajnISlu'}, the
word {Sov} is in a place that only a complete sentence can fit, so it is
apparently a verb, not a noun.  I read it "One must earn that he knows."
Note that "he knows" has a definite subject, but "one must earn" doesn't.
This is a bit incongruous.

>  Somehow I confused you
>to the point of misrecognizing a canonical phrase, sorry.  What should I do
>to <Sov> to make it fit the rest; <... 'e' bajnISlu'>?

If you want to say "one must earn knowledge", you simply have to use the
noun {Sov} as the object of the verb {baj}.  The pronoun {'e'} doesn't
belong here, since there isn't a previous sentence to refer to.

{Sov bajnISlu'} "one must earn knowledge" or "knowledge must be earned".

-- ghunchu'wI'               batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj

Back to archive top level