tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jul 27 23:03:48 1994
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long-winded question
- From: [email protected] (Mark E. Shoulson)
- Subject: long-winded question
- Date: Thu, 28 Jul 1994 10:59:57 -0400
- In-Reply-To: James Lyle's message of Wed, 27 Jul 1994 20:40:22 -0700 (PDT) <[email protected]>
>From: James Lyle <[email protected]>
>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:
Never say "there's no way"; see below :)
>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).
It should be pointed out that this argument has been discussed in detail on
this list before, and at least I tend to use the "-vaD" more or less as you
propose... but not in all cases (after all, semantics has a hand in this
too)
> 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!
Yes, that it probably would. OK, so simple structures can't handle this.
Hey, it happens. We have a similar problem trying to use "-laH" and "-lu'"
on the same verb (we can't). So we use another locution. How about:
jIqIp'egh 'e' qaSmoH yaS. (the simplest and most general one we use)
Maybe:
jIqIp'egh 'e' muraD yaS, or muraDmo' yaS, jIqIp'egh.
As charghwI' is fond of pointing out, never assume that what is one
sentence in English need necessarily be so in Klingon... or vice-versa.
>James
~mark