tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Feb 12 14:48:41 2010

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Re: suffixes -lu'wI'

Brent Kesler ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 8:43 AM, André Müller <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Through the translations provided by Okrand. See the example on page 39 of
> TKD: {Daqawlu'}, which is translated as "you are remembered" — I'm not
> trying to cram passive into the {-lu'} morpheme and I explicitely said that.
> But the meaning overlaps with the passive in many languages, although it's
> not the same, so it's a logical assumption to go from {Daqawlu'} to "you are
> being remembered [by someone]", as this matches exactly the roles that the
> prefix shows. Then the only weird thing is the word order.

At this point I'm surprised no one has noted this example from the
phrases section at the back of TKD:

{HuSDaq ba'lu''a'?} "Is someone sitting in this chair?"
(This is from the top of my head -- I don't remember the actual gloss.)

This is one canon example where a {-lu'} verb does not overlap with
the passive. You can't say *"In this chair is sat?" You can say "Is
this chair being sat in?" but I think the preposition modifies "sat"
rather than governs "chair". In that case, the structure of the
English passive doesn't quite map to the structure of the Klingon
"passive". But {ba'} is intransitive; it can't take an object, so
calling {ba'lu'} a passive is meaningless.

Add this to David's example, {yaS qIplu'}, and it appears that {-lu'}
is not valency changing the way a passive should be, despite the
strange use of the pronomial prefixes. But an example André gives
indicates that even with the prefixes, there is no valency change:

{naDev puqpu' lutu'lu'} "One finds children around here."
{naDev puqpu' lutu' yaSpu'} "The officers finds children here." (added
for comparison)

André's explanation for the lack of valency change in the apparent passive:
> The prefix indicates that a first person plural subject is involved. But
> when using an overt subject in such a sentence, it's used in object
> position

In other words, the Klingon "passive" moves the object argument to the
subject position, but if the object is actually expressed rather than
merely implied, it moves it back to the object position? Would that be
a valency cloaking construction?

cha' DarSeqwIj tIghaj!
bI'reng

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