tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Feb 08 11:05:31 2004

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Re: other person imperatives

sangqar ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

> It appears that I stand corrected...
> Thanks to everyone who responded. I had no idea that this construction
> ("Let's go!") was, in fact, a "non-second-person imperative". I always
> thought of it more as a {-jaj}-type of idea.

And indeed it is a {-jaj}-type idea:

This suffix is used to express a desire or wish on the part of the speaker that something take 
place in the future. (TKD 176 [Addendum 4.2.9])

And that's exactly what the third-person imperative is: a desire on the part of the speaker that 
something happen.  "Future" here does not have to mean far future.  God here is expressing 
his will that something take place. While it takes place immediately upon completion of his 
utterance, during the utterance, the event is still in the future.

So {wov(choH)jaj} would work here, I think.

> So, how do we apply this to "Let there be light?".
> The Hebrew apparently has it as an imperative, and there very well might
> have been someone he was talking to, as evinced by the use of "elohim"
> ("god-plural", right?) just a few words away.
> I still vote for {yIwovchoH!}.

This could also work, since we can interpret it as God addressing the universe, all of 
creation, or whatever.

Clipped Klingon might also be an option here.  We know it is used to give commands to pets. 
Do we know whether it is also used to give commands to computers? If so, we might 
extrapolate that it is used to give commands to non-sentient things. (By this I mean things 
you would use {-mey} or {-Du'} with rather than {-pu'}.)

So:
wovchoHjaj
yIwovchoH
wovchoH

I think any of these would work. Which would a Klingon use? That I can't say.

> --ngabwI'

-Sangqar

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