tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Aug 27 08:10:29 1994
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Re: Adjectival verbs
Bill Willmerdinger wrote:
> I've been assuming that adjectival verbs, like "tuj" be hot
> or "boch" be shiny, could not be used as the main verb in a
> sentence, but only as modifiers on a noun. Looking at the
> examples in my TKD, however, I see "boch ghIchraj" and "yItamchoH",
> both of which use verbs I had tagged as "adjectival".
> I guess that I've been excluding from use fully half of the
> verbs in TKD, effectively keeping myself from saying things I
> thought I couldn't say easily. Some of these were keeping me from
> going further on a couple of translation projects!
I think most of us have seen a "jIQuch" used every now and then.
But {Quch} = be happy is also adjectival, i.e., loDHom Quch.
If you want that to be a complete sentence, you could
instead say, {Quch loDHom} = The boy is happy. That one joke
on PK with the prison guard has lots of good examples (jIghung,
jI'oj, jIDoy'qu', etc.) to help guide you.
> Qob
Amy