tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Dec 18 23:51:50 1994

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Re: -lu'



marqoS:
> I don't see -lu' as equivalent to vay', either; I interpret a sentence with
> vay' as referring to a particular, but unidentified, party, e.g.
> 
> 	nughoS vay'!		Someone's coming!
> 
> Whereas the subject in a -lu' construction is completely vague, either 
> unimportant or general.  I mean, imagine if Kruge had said to Valkris:
> 
> 	batlh lIqawtaH	vay'	Someone will remember you with honor 
> 
> instead of
> 
> 	batlh Daqawlu'taH	You will be remembered with honor 
> 
> The former implies that there exists some person somewhere that
> will remember her with honor; the latter implies that it is a general
> state of affairs, that anyone who remembers her will think of her honorably.
> (In the former case, Kruge might even be referring to himself obliquely, 
>  although obliqueness doesn't seem to be way up there on the list of Klingon
>  character traits.)
> 
> All IMESHO.
> 
> -marqoS
Hmm, maybe that this is a misunderstanding, due to
English not being my native language, but couldn't
vay' be interpreted as "anybody" in the first sentence?

With the explanation of lu' in TKD (s.o. does s.th. to s.o.)
this would reverse the meaning of the two examples you
give, wouldn't it?

So we're stuck...
But anyway, even if -lu' and vay' mean the same,
I think vay' is the only way to express an unspecified
OBJECT, or could you simply us the ...-it prefixes?

Qapla'
				MArc 'Doychlangan'


--
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Marc Ruehlaender	[email protected]
Universitaet des Saarlandes, Saarbruecken, Germany
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