tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Dec 13 16:59:03 1993
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Re: something weird about imperatives
Doch tlha' jatlhta' Guido#1:
:
:
: In Klingon, all a verbal prefix really does is allow the pronouns to be
: implicit. Therefore, I conclude that this carries over to imperatives,
: where it would be safe to say something like:
: {tengchaH yIlon tlhIH}. "All of you, abandon the station!"
:
: I've been thinking lately about those imperatives (I'm not sure what the
: accurate term for them is, but I know there must be one) that are translated
: as "Let's [do something]," where the subject is 1st person plural. This
: has normally been translated with a 1st-pl.subject prefix with the {-jaj}
: suffix. But {-jaj} acts more like the Optative mood, so the idea of a
: command is somehow lost.
:
: I would like to suggest, that if your intended meaning was "Let's abandon
: the station," it might come out better as:
: {tengchaH yIlon maH} rather than {tengchaH wIlonjaj}.
:
: I write this with NickNicholas in mind, since his broad linguistic knowledge
: seems appropriate to devise a clever solution to this.
Interesting, but I don't think I like it. While pronouns are not wrong in
conjunction with a verbal prefix, as I read the rules they cannot *contradict*
the prefix. Imperatives are weird in just about every language I know (except
perhaps Lojban), because of the very nature of the beast: they have an object
and an addressee, but no real subject. [This is ad hoc; I don't know if someone
more versed in linguistic theory would say otherwise.] >tengchaH yilon maH<
doesn't make particular sense to me: I think you're trying to use a subject
pronoun to contradict the prefix and change the addressee, a doubly impossible
task since the pronoun not only can't contradict the prefix but doesn't even
seem like it's filling the right role! I think for now, we'll just have to
stick with >tengchaH wilonjaj< for those pesky 1st person plural imperatives
(or, if you want to take a leaf from Erich Schneider's vinyakaarie based on the
_Birthright_ song, >tengchaH qelon<).
>vuDwij neH 'oH Dochvam'e'...ghoH neH'a' vay'?<
:
:
: Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos
:
:
Qapla' Qichqemwi'vo'.
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