tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Apr 20 13:37:43 2002

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Re: to'nech 71-80



ja'pu' SuStel:
>The only words that are actually verbs of speaking are /jatlh/ and /ja'/.
>Anything else is just a regular verb.

ja' "Sean M. Burke" <[email protected]>:
>TKD 6.2 says net/'e' aren't used "with verbs (say, tell, ask, etc.)"...
>[...]
>So I took a stab and inferred that anything denotes an action that I think
>of as prototypically involving saying something, gets to be in that class
>of things that take no net/'e'.

Unfortunately, what you think involves saying isn't necessarily what others
think involves saying.  {jach} "scream", for example, has typically been
used intransitively, in the sense of "make a loud yelling noise".

>Even that's a fuzzy set tho -- for example, if ra' is in that set, is
>jach?  tung?  chup?  nubmoH?  naD?

Good questions.

>Gotta draw the line somewhere, I guess.

The strict place to draw the line is with {ja'} and {jatlh} only.  An
Okrand interview in HolQeD strongly supports that interpretation, with
phrasing like {HoD vIyu'; jIjatlh nuqDaq yuch Dapol?} being the norm.

I personally take the mention of "ask" in TKD 6.2 and the {lutlhob naDevvo'
vaS'a'Daq majaHlaH'a'?} joke in PK as evidence that {tlhob} is an
acceptable verb of saying as well, but I'm not evangelizing that view.

Informally, almost anything can be understood as a verb of saying,
especially if you punctuate it to show what is a quote and what is not.

That brings me to the other point which I didn't see addressed explicitly:
so far as we know, Klingon uses only *direct* quotes.  Fixing the verb of
saying, your {DujlIj luvoq tIja'!} says "Tell them, 'They trust your
instincts.'"  If you want to tell them to trust your instincts, you have to
say to them "Trust my instincts."

-- ghunchu'wI'


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