tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Dec 07 07:49:16 1994
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Re: -Daq quickie
>Date: Tue, 6 Dec 1994 17:32:22 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>According to David Trimboli:
>>
>> Greetings, all.
>>
>> (1) A quick question: is -Daq allowed to go on a time reference?
>> I don't see any reason it shouldn't, but I'd like the grammarians'
>> opinions. For example, can I say "wa'maH vatlh repDaq" instead of
>> "qaSDI' wa'maH vatlh rep", and "*Sunday*Daq" instead of "qaSDI' *Sunday*"?
>> I have seen the latter of each of these examples used, but I don't
>> remember seeing the former.
You've *got* to do something about your editor; it's padding every line out
to something too long.
>It is considered idiomatic to languages other than Klingon to
>use a locative time reference. Time and space seem to be
>unrelated within the Klingon language. That's why you have seen
>examples like the latter and not the former.
Just a small piece of corroborative evidence for this (after all, using
locatives for time isn't that rare in languages, why avoid it in Klingon?):
Okrand himself blatantly avoids using "-Daq" temporally, in the famous
sentence "qaStaHvIS wa' ram, loS SaD Hugh SIjlaH qetbogh loD." He *could*
have said "wa' ramDaq", but very plainly didn't. We take this as evidence
that -taHvIS constructions (esp. qaStaHvIS), are at the very least
preferable to temporal "-Daq"s, if the latter is permitted at all.
~mark