tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Apr 30 06:22:12 2004

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Verbs of quality and 'e'

David Trimboli ([email protected])

• From: "David Trimboli" <[email protected]>
• Subject: Verbs of quality and 'e'
• Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 09:21:31 -0400
• References: <[email protected]>

From: <[email protected]>
> DuH qechvam, 'ach Human Hol qub ghoj chaH 'e' DuH je,

I've been seeing this a few times recently: someone uses a phrase of the
form /'e' <verb of quality>/.  This doesn't work.  (And I'm not picking on
lay'tel SIvten: a lot of people have been doing this recently.)

For instance, in the sentence above, lay'tel SIvten means to say, "It is
possible that . . . ."  The problem is that /'e'/ must be the object of
/DuH/ "be possible," but being a verb of quality, /DuH/ doesn't take
objects.  Would you say */Duj DuH/?  Of course not.  Neither can you say
/'e' DuH/ or any other phrase like this.

In English, "It is possible that they learn rare human languages" is using
"it" as the pronomial stand-in for the sentence, "They learn rare human
languages."  Ungrammatically, but logically, you could write the English
sentence like this: "[They learn rare human languages] is possible."  The
second sentence is really the subject, not the object.  Klingon can't do
this.

In Klingon, you must rephrase.  One possibility:

    chaq Human Hol qub ghoj chaH.
    Maybe they learn rare human languages.

SuStel
Stardate 4330.0

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