tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Feb 12 19:55:12 2010

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Re: suffixes -lu'wI'

MorphemeAddict ([email protected])



{naDev puqpu' lutu'lu'} "One finds children around here."
{naDev puqpu' lutu' yaSpu'} "The officers finds children here." (added
for comparison)
The comparison should be modified to be correct:
{naDev puqpu' tu' yaSpu'}. Prefix "lu-" is for subj=3pl,obj=3sg.
lay'tel SIvten

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 5:46 PM, Brent Kesler <[email protected]
> wrote:

> 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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