tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Apr 04 00:06:41 1994
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More on negation
On Mon, 4 Apr 1994, Mark Reed wrote:
> \ a) tlhInganbe' jIH or
> \ b) tlhIngan jIHbe'
> \
> In these constructions, the pronoun is acting as a verb, and any verb suffixes
> may be applied as necessary to the pronoun. In general, suffixes may not be
> attached to a word that is not of the correct type; you may not put a verb
> suffix on a noun, or vice-versa. A noun with -be' , in particular, appears to
> be a compound using the nound be' (woman), so that "tlhInganbe' jIH" could
> be constured to mean "I am a Klingon woman".
>
So what exactly are you saying? That you could correctly say "tlhIngan
jIHbe'"? What you said does makes sense, and I would tend to agree that
that would be the most logical choice of where to place be' so that you
are not talking about a woman [which I had never thought of before].
Let's take another example. I have always translated "I love you" as
"bang SoH". So you could say "I don't love you" as " bang SoHbe' " ?
[Or is that a bad translation for 'I love you' anyway? Seems like it
could be, considering how well I am doing so far. :)] In any case,
assuming those are okay translations, here are my guesses as to a few more
related phrases, please tell me if I am right or wrong.
1) "I will never love you" not bang SoH
2) "I have never loved you" not bang SoHpu'
Comments: 1) Since future tense must be taken in context [right?] and
with the absence of -taH, then this much seems to make sense. 2) -pu'
seems to be the only appropriate verb suffix to use here; I wouldn't
think that -ta' would work, and -taH doesn't indicate the past as
is necessary. This is assuming that the pronoun does indeed act as a
verb [which it makes sense to think that it does, considering it is
replacing the English verb 'to be'] and can therefore take verb suffixes.
Comments please?
-Carl