tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 12 16:43:36 1998

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Re: Usage of 'e' and stuff like that there



---"Lt. Cdr. Sarah Barrows" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> After I wrote /maS vIbejDI', jIDoghchoH. 'e' vIjatlhpu''a'?/, this
> happened...
> 
> >I meant to say something along the lines of,
> > "Haven't I already said that?" or "Didn't I say that before?"
which is
> 
> > why I used /-pu'/. Maybe it's a case of my mixing up tense with > >
> aspect again. I have been into Latin again a bit lately. Amavi,
> > amavisti, ama- *smack!* This is a *Klingon* list, Syd! Pay
attention!
> 
> Qov said:
> The problem here was not with using aspect but with a little picky
> rule that Okrand himself neglects: it's forbidden to use an aspect
> suffix on the verb whose object is /'e'/.  I think it's in section
> 6.2.5.
> 
> Okay, I couldn't find that, but I'll take your word for it (you *are*
> Qov, after all! ;D).

*I* wouldn't take my word for it, so I checked.  Last sentence of the 
second parargraph on page 66.  Very easy to miss, because there is so
much going on in that paragraph.

> I wanna know if I can say what I'd intended to say
> (which was really just a convention of my English speech I thought 
> would work). Can I say, "I've said that," as a separate sentence, 
> with /'e'/ used as a pronoun and meaning the sentence immediately 
> before it? 

>From what we know, that wouldn't be the way to say it.  See Voragh's
post /tlhIngan-Hol/current/0182.html on what we know
about refering to speech with jatlh. (If you're reading this after
August 31, 1998 the URL will probably be
/tlhIngan-Hol/1998/Sep98/0182.html - for some reason
the archives are out of sync with the actual months). 

> I was
> just thinking I should use /net/, except then I realised that's for 
> "one [says] that" or what have you. I want to use it with "I". 

Correct.

> If it's not
> possible/legal, then I wanna know so's I don't do it anymore. It's one
> of those little slang-type things that I use around the house 

There are two reasons not to say */'e' vIjatlhpu''a'/:
1. jatlh doesn't take /'e'/
2. /'e' forbids /-pu'/ 

Change it to /jIjatlhpu''a'/ and it works just fine.  You could even
say /vIjatlhpu''a'/ and it would be understood that the object was
"the sentence" or "the advice" or what-have-you. 

> So that's what I wanna know. :) Can y'all help me out?

Does that help?
==

Qov - Beginners' Grammarian

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