tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Apr 11 07:29:45 1994
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Re: {-qu'}
- From: Rich Yampell <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: {-qu'}
- Date: Mon, 11 Apr 94 17:32:46 -0600
>One other thing: Most languages (that I know of) topicalize not by a
>separate, explicit phoneme, but by simple accentuation of the phoneme(s) to
>be topicalized. (e.g., "we are NOT afraid to kill you"). The exception of
>course would be tone languages like Mandarin, which topicalizes
>syntactically. Since Klingon does not use tones, and yet topicalizes with
>explicit syllables, this leads me to believe that Klingon stress and
>accentuation are very strict, i.e., all words have very specific stress
>patterns, and accentuation of a syllable just for topicalizational purposes
>screws up the stress pattern.
>
>That's why Klingon says {jIvumnISqu'} rather than {jIvum*nIS*}. {vum}, being
>the root of the word, must be accentuated (see TKD 1.3), and {-nIS} would
>have to fall secondary of lower on the stress pattern of this word. So,
>{-qu'} is used to emphasize it.
>Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos
Guido, I love you! Thanks to this post, I was moved to go back and
review TKD 1.3, and in it I found The Thing That I've Been Looking
For For Years.
The argument about jIvumnISqu' versus jIvum*nIS* is an old one. It
showed up on this list years ago. I have always felt instinctively
that in fact once *could* use stress for emphasis, that jIvum*nIS*
was acceptible, however I lacked any proof for it and had, until
now, conceded the point. But there it is, in black and white, right
on page 17:
"In addition, if the meaning of any particular suffix
is to be emphasized, the stress may shift to that syllable."
So there it is. Either works. My take would be that using an
explicit -qu' evokes a stronger emphasis than simply stressing the
suffix, particularly since, again according to 1.3, -qu' itself is
frequently stressed.
Boy, I'm happy!
--Krankor