tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jul 15 13:09:05 2000

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Re: aspect suffixes on pronouns (was Re: yIH? vIghro'?)

jatlh ghunchu'wI':
> > The examples in TKD section 6.3 are few, but they consistently omit
aspect
> > suffixes when describing things like set membership, and consistently
> > include them when describing location.  The impression I get is that
{be'
> > SoH} is something akin to a simple state of being, and {pa'Daq SoHtaH}
> > describes an ongoing but perhaps temporary condition.

[...]

> The verbal function is defined by the introductory noun serving as the
> pronoun's direct object. I'd call this a transitive use of the pronoun and
> Okrand would wince because he doesn't like the word "transitive" used when
> describing Klingon grammar. In {pa'Daq SoH}, the pronoun is being used
> intransitively and there really isn't any obvious cue that the pronoun is
> being used as a verb. On the most gut level translation, I'm immediately
> driven to ask, "In the room, you WHAT? What are you doing in the room, or
> what is being done to you in the room? Did I miss a word here?" Meanwhile,
> adding the Type 7 suffix doesn't change the meaning much and it makes it
> clear that the pronoun is being used as a verb. {pa'Daq jIHtaH.

To understand whether ot use aspect suffixes on pronouns, I don't think it's
quite necessary to go through the analysis and suppositions that you do.
They're still pronouns, not verbs, though they act a lot like verbs.  It's
important not to analyze them too much as verb-like.

Looking through a few of the examples, though not a lot, I'd say that the
choice to put a continuous aspect suffix on a pronoun would be akin to
choosing between /ser/ and /estar/ in Spanish.  They're both "to be," but
one is descriptive, and the other is situational.  One describes an inherent
quality of something, the other describes a more temporary sort of
situation.

Soy un muchacho.
I am a boy. (Not /Estoy un muchacho/.)

loDHom jIH.
I am a boy.  (Not /loDHom jIHtaH/.)

Estoy en el baņo.
I am in the bathroom.  (Not /Soy en el baņo/.)

puchpa'Daq jIHtaH.
I am in the bathroom.  (Not /puchpa'Daq jIH/.)

(Forgive any errors in my Spanish.  It's been a long time!)

You can choose to assign special grammatical or situational reasons for
this, or special ways to think of it to make it make sense to you, but
there's no telling if they're correct.  The "to be" sentences are a special
case in Klingon, and it may be simply because it is (sic!).

jatlh ghunchu'wI':
> > >I thought that <nIQwIj bIH yIHmey'e'.> meant, "The tribbles, they are
my
> > >breakfast."
> > >jIyajHa'a'?

jatlh charghwI':
> This is the sort of strange interpretation that you get if you look at the
> words without recognizing the exceptional nature of this sentence form and
> the more typical translation of it into English.
>
> > Okrand might translate it "As for the tribbles, they are my breakfast."
>
> Perhaps so, when he was first creating the language, though I suspect he
> would now just translate it as "The tribbles are my breakfast."

I don't think Okrand has changed his style of translating these sentences.
In TKD, he used the "as for blah" translations to make it clearer how to
understand the way the "to be" construction works.  He doesn't claim it's
the best English translation.  If he were explaining "to be" again, I think
he'd continue to use the "as for blah" translation.  If he were translating
a sentence with "to be" in it for some piece of text, he's have nearly
always translated it "The tribbles are my breakfast."

I won't even get into the good reason why one might consider

nIQwIj 'oH yIHmey'e'

to be the correct version of this sentence!

SuStel
Stardate 538.9

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