tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jul 27 11:44:00 1994
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long-winded question
- From: James Lyle <[email protected]>
- Subject: long-winded question
- Date: Wed, 27 Jul 1994 20:40:22 -0700 (PDT)
Salutations.
Here's a problem I have run into with causative verb forms in Klingon:
There seems to be no way to express, for example, "the officer made me
hit myself." Here is my reasoning:
Based on the form HIQoymoH given in TKD for 'let me hear (something)', it
looks like Klingon causatives of transitive verbs take the subject of the
transitive verb as the direct object (because HI- is the imperative
prefix for you-me). In human languages which do this,
the object of the transitive verb is then given as either a 'frozen'
second direct object which does not agree with the verb, or as an
indirect object. So I think that in Klingon you would say something like
yuchvaD muSopmoH yaS
for "the officer makes me eat chocolate" (at least it comes out this way
in human languages that behave similarly). So how do you say "the
officer makes me hit myself"? I can try
jiHvaD muqIpmoH yaS
but doesn't this translate as 'the officer makes me hit me'--in real
languages a reflexive pronoun (myself) would be called for, but Klingon
doesn't have them??
It's certain that
qIp'eghmoH yaS
won't work, this must mean something like "the officer makes himself hit
(something)". Or does it? Help!
James