tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 26 02:49:46 1994

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Re: vIja''eghqa'



According to David Barron:
> 
> 
> I was trying to say "...this sentence I recite to myself."
> and what I used was    mu'tlheghvam vIja''eghqa'
> .                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^
> I need soem feedback on if you-all feel if this verb gets the 
> message across clearly.
>  
> David Barron

Eeeww! Yep. That's a gnarly one. The problem is that, my
recollection is that the verbal prefix for reflexive verbs
(using the {'egh} suffix) are always supposed to be of the form
that indicates no object. "I hit myself," becomes {jIqIp'egh}.
"I tell myself," becomes {jIja''egh}. There is nothing in TKD
that says it is okay to say {vIja''egh}. Meanwhile, what is it
that you tell yourself?

This gets into that indirect/direct object stuff. Your "self"
in this case is really the INdirect object. Meanwhile, you want
to also refer to a direct object.

This is parallel to the way we say {qajatlh} to mean "I speak
to you." Great. We also say {Dochmey vIjatlh} to mean "I say
things." So how do I say, "I say things to you."? We can fall
back to {SoHvaD Dochmey vIjatlh} rather than get tangled up in
{Dochmey qajatlh}, which is not exactly clear.

Meanwhile, in YOUR example, TKD tells us that we can only use
{jI-} and not {vI-} if we are using {-'egh}. So how do we link
{mu'tlheghvam} to the verb?

I'd tend to drop back and punt:
jIHvaD mutlheghvam vIjatlhqa'

Actually, I also think that if I wanted to convey the sense of
"recite", I might prefer "practice/drill". Unfortunately, I am
away from my TKD and my vocabulary does not include this word.
In this case, I'd also include the implied {'e'}, since such a
verb would not necessarily indicate speech.

charghwI'



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