tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Aug 07 12:32:27 1994

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Re: Klingon math, et al



Hu'tegh! nuq ja' Mark E. Shoulson jay'?

="-lu'" doesn't reverse the roles of subject and object.  "-lu'" is *NOT* a
=passive voice.  It's an indefinite subject marker.  It is for this reason
=that Okrand calls it an "indefinite subject" marker and not a "passive
=voice" marker.  In fact, he's very careful in explaining the meaning to
=stress that there *is* a subject: an indefinite one.

Yeah. Just thought I'd add that the redoubtable (and loud) Igor Mel'cuk
(linguistics bigwig) gave a seminar presentation here the other week, in
which he explained how Africanists kept being befuddled by the fact that
the subjects of Maasai 'passives' were in the 'accusative' case because
they didn't realise that (1) Maasai is an ergative language, not an
accusative one; (2) the 'passive' was actually a subject-suppressive, like
the Klingon form. Estonian is another language which uses a suppressive
instead of a passive.

Which just goes to show (as I always like to say) that Klingon will *always*
be outwierded by some language or other already on *this* planet...

-- 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Nick Nicholas. Linguistics, University of Melbourne.   [email protected]  
        [email protected]      [email protected]
            AND MOVING SOON TO: [email protected]



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