tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Oct 03 10:02:55 1997
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Re: KLBC: lut vIja'
- From: "David Trimboli" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KLBC: lut vIja'
- Date: Fri, 3 Oct 97 16:32:33 UT
[email protected] on behalf of Qov wrote:
> }lut vIja'
>
> I accept this usage but at least one other grammarian doesn't. I'll let him
> tell you what he would prefer you say.
I don't necessarily disagree, but I have strong reservations. Unfortunately,
Marc Okrand has yet to reply to my MSN post on this very question.
The objection is this: in every single instance in canon of {ja'} taking an
object, the object it takes is the person being spoken to, not the thing being
said. Now, it's possible that this verb has a variety of possible objects,
and it's possible that the "prefix-shortening" that we see on sentences like
{tIqwIj Sa'angnIS} is happening here (can somebody please come up with an
aesthetically pleasing term for this?), but the fact remains that Okrand
himself has never, ever used the thing said with {ja'}.
The ONLY question I have: Okrand translated for himself every Klingon line in
Star Trek III in case they decided to film a specific line in Klingon. I
desperately want to know how he translated Kruge's line, "Report status!"
Given the vocabulary available in the first edition of TKD, I'm almost
positive that he made it {Dotlh yIja'}, which would add the thing said onto
the list of possible objects. However, this is only conjecture. Even then,
it might be a clipped sentence, more like, {Dotlh! yIja'!} "Status!
Report!" which works in with the person-spoken-to-only evidence.
What should you say?
lut vIjatlh
I speak a story.
I tell a story.
Okrand tells us that the sentence {SoQ vIjatlh} "I speak a lecture," "I give a
lecture" is perfectly legitimate and it seems that anything spoken (though not
a quotation) may be the object of {jatlh}.
SuStel
Stardate 97756.8