tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Sep 22 11:08:32 1997
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Re: yIjey'lu'
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: yIjey'lu'
- Date: Mon, 22 Sep 1997 14:09:21 -0400 ()
- Priority: NORMAL
On Sun, 21 Sep 1997 16:12:31 -0700 (PDT) Alan Anderson
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Tad Stauffer wrote:
> >could you use {yIjeylu'} to mean "Be defeated!"...,
>
> I wrote:
> >That's...interesting. Very...interesting. At first glance, it's odd. At
> >second glance, it looks like it works.
>
> SuStel writes:
> >Except, of course, for the fact that "commands can only be given to 'you' or
> >'you (plural)'" (TKD p. 34). If you use {-lu'}, you have no subject,
> >including "you" or "you (plural)."
>
> TKD doesn't actually say that the recipient of a command has to be the
> *subject* of the command. It merely gives a collection of prefixes to
> be used. If the use of {-lu'} requires that the prefix be interpreted
> in the other direction, I don't see why it doesn't work.
I DO see why this doesn't work. For a long time, I've been a
proponant of translating {-lu'} as passive voice, yet
recognizing that {-lu'} and the passive voice are not completely
identical. You now have discovered a place where they are quite
unlike one another. Why?
Dajey - You defeat him.
Dajeylu' - You are defeated. One defeats you.
yIjey - [You] Defeat him!
*yIjeylu' - [You] *Be defeated. Make it so that one defeats
[You].
See how incredibly awkward that last translation gets? I don't
think it works at all.
I accept that there are uses of {-lu'} that required some
serious head twisting in my past. {ba'lu'} in TKD was very
confusing until I recognized that {-lu'} simply behaves
differently with intransitive verbs such that passive voice
translation does not apply, but the indefinite ("one") subject
translation DOES apply. Now, you suggest that with imperatives,
the passive voice DOES apply, but the indefinite ("one) subject
translation does NOT apply.
jIQochqu'.
Unless we get some confirmation about this from Okrand, I will
not accept this. I will not use the construction, and if someone
writes it to me, I'll discount it as a gross grammatical error
and ignore it.
> -- ghunchu'wI'
charghwI'