tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Feb 12 01:04:29 2010

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: suffixes -lu'wI'

Andrà MÃller ([email protected]) 

It seems that the main problem here is caused by our different analyses: you
are judging from the lables and Okrand's descriptions, I am judging from
what kind of sentences the language provides. Both is perfectly valid. So
either you go with Okrand and say that {-lu'} marks that the subject as
indefinite, plus, it causes that the prefixes to switch their indicated
roles (subject to object and vice versa). Then {-wI'} is clearly impossible.
Or you go for the alternative analysis: {-lu'} marks the subject as
indefinite, then works like a normal passive (turning the object into the
subject) which however allows the (indefinite) agent be marked as the direct
object. Then it causes a switch in word order moving the subject to object
position in the phrase. Then {-wI'} would be possible.
Both theories work. I now see that my theory is slightly more complex, so
you could use Ockham's razor and do away with my theory. On the other hand,
the changes involved in my interpretation might be simpler one by one than
the one's in Okrand's analysis. It's very untypical for a language to switch
around the roles in portmanteau prefixes as such, but it's quite usual to
switch one's word order around in some sentence-types. I know that judgement
comes from terran languages and might not apply at all to Klingon.

Anyway. There are these two analyses, and obviously, when in doubt, we gotta
stick to Okrand's analysis. That's fine with me.
Just wanted to explain that I did not simply ignore Okrand's comments (well,
I overlooked them at first), but gave a different interpretation, which
seems to be favorited by some people (Roger Cheesbro, for instance, who
translated ghIlghameS), but disprefered by others. That's okay. :)

- André

2010/2/12 ghunchu'wI' 'utlh <[email protected]>

> On Feb 11, 2010, at 8:20 PM, André Müller <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > If Okrand wouldn't have added
> > the section you kindly cited some emails above, wouldn't it be
> > possible that
> > {-lu'} verbs just cause a weird change in word order? Do you see any
> > evidence which would falsify this possible/theoretical analysis?
>
> The verb suffix {-lu'} is defined as meaning "indefinite subject".
> That seems like conclusive evidence that a noun preceding the verb
> bearing {-lu'} is not the subject. The word order is standard. It is
> merely the verb prefix that changes from its usual interpretation.
>
> If you need a reason for *why* the prefix is weird, I think it's
> because verb prefixes always carry the idea of a subject. Something
> has to be done differently when no subject is to be implied. It could
> have been done with the no-object prefixes instead of the third-person
> singular object ones...or it could have been done in a number of other
> ways. Whatever the reason for the specific prefixes used, I think it's
> clear that the object remains the object if {-lu'} is present.
>
> -- ghunchu'wI'
>
>
>

Back to archive top level