tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Dec 09 19:56:25 2007
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Re: Prefix and noun agreement (was: usage of type-7 aspect suffix {-pu})
I've read several votes on this, so I'll add mine. I'm suspecting
that SuStel will like my vote. I think that {qorDu' reghom qorDu'} is
grammatically wrong. Yes, you can figure out what it means, but...
Okay. "Blue dot finger pain electric socket stupid fingernail file
I'm sitting in the dark." You can probably figure out what that
means, but it doesn't make it grammatical.
If I want to say, "My family meets your family," the right way to do
it is with the noun suffix, not the verb prefix.
As I understand it, the "prefix trick" works in one very specific set
of circumstances:
1. The sentence needs to include an explicit third person direct object.
2. That same sentence needs a verb prefix that indicates first or
second person for the direct object.
The "trick" then allows you to understand that the verb prefix is
indicating the indirect object, and not the direct object.
I do not know of any circumstances where disagreement between the
subject indicated by the verb prefix and the explicit subject can
disagree. What would that indicate, anyway? "Indirect subject"? It's
gibberish, to me, anyway.
This idea of somehow indicating that a group can be identified as
including a first or second person by using an explicit group noun
(third person, since explicit nouns tend to be third person, unless
they are proper nouns naming someone who happens to be first or
second person) and then using a verb prefix that disagrees with that
third person... That's not merely an unusual idea. It's just, well,
wrong.
There's nothing in TKD that says you can do it. There's nothing in
canon that says you can do it. So far as I know, Okrand has never
suggested that you could do it. Maltz never said you could do it. It
just looks like someone grabbed a thread from the fabric of the
prefix trick and took off running with it, unravelling the sweater,
so to speak.
Some people may like the prefix trick, while others hate it. At this
point, I think it is a matter of taste. But this whole {qorDu' reghom
qorDu'} and {maleng targhwIj} thing is not Klingon language by any
description that Okrand has given us.
That's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it. There's no wiggle room
here. It crosses the line where wrong is just wrong... unless, of
course, Okrand says otherwise, revealing some previously unknown truth.
Doq
On Dec 6, 2007, at 8:07 AM, David Trimboli wrote:
> Alan Anderson wrote:
>
>> The odd thing is that I don't have a big problem treating it as a
>> first person subject when the verb prefix asks me to.
>
> That *is* odd. What would you make of this:
>
> qorDu' reghom qorDu'
>
> SuStel
> Stardate 7930.3
>
>