tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 09 21:08:16 1994

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prefixes on pronouns



>From: Captain Krankor <[email protected]>
>Date: Wed, 9 Feb 94 18:17:29 -0700

>How would you say:  "Stop whining and be a Klingon!"

>I submit:

>bIvIngtaH 'e' yImev 'ej tlhIngan yISoH!

>Yep, there is no proper defense of it, and, when pushed, I'll readily admit
>it is technically illegal.  But it's clear, elegant, and there's just no
>other way to do it.  Frankly, I think Okrand would sanction it if it were
>brought before him.  Again, I'm willing to look the other way on this one.

Sorry, Krankor, I have to agree with charghwI' here.  No way am I going to
accept this one.  "tlhIngan yIDa" is the best way to express this; that's
why the Holy Blissful Grammarian gave us "Da".

More and more I'm coming to think that *if* the pronouns were normal verbs
(they aren't), it would work something like this: Let's say the root of the
verb is X; then we have irregular conjugations for all the parts: "vI-X"
takes the form "jIH", "Da-X" takes the form "SoH", "DI-X" is "maH", "bo-X"
is "tlhIH", and adding on the assorted zero-prefixes for the third-person
cases gives us "ghaH", "'oH", "chaH", and "bIH".  So "*yISoH" sounds to me
almost like "yIDa-X", which is too many prefixes.  OK, this *isn't* how the
verb works, and I'm not proposing that it is, but I think it's a useful way
to think of things sometimes.

>			   --Krankor

~mark



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