tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Nov 22 11:36:46 1994
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Re: Idea.
>Date: Tue, 22 Nov 1994 11:56:01 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: "...Paul" <[email protected]>
>>> tlhIngan Hol vIghItlh 'e' vImevQo'!
>>
>><-Qo'> is a suffix only used on imperatives; <-be'> is what you want
>>here. <-be'> acts as the negation of most verbs, but it can't go on
>>imperatives; that's why we have <-Qo'>. maj!
>-Qo' can be used on non-imperatives. In that situation, though, it
>takes the meaning of "won't", rather than "Don't!". Actually, the
>most useful negation on verbs in imperatives (ie. the -be' substitute)
>is -Ha'...
Hmm... It may be that we're simply interpreting the concept of "-be'
substitute" differently, but it seems to me that the -be' substitute in
imperatives is -Qo', not -Ha'.
Consider. Start from a positive indicative sentence: bIlaD/you read. The
simple negative is bIlaDbe'/you don't read. The positive command, of
course, is yIlaD/read!. It would seem to me that the negative command,
i.e. the imperative counterpart to bIlaDbe', would mean "be such that: you
don't read" (to borrow a page from Lojban), even as "yIlaD" means something
along the lines of "be such that: you read" (i.e. make the statement "you
read" true). Well, the usual English phrasing for "be such that you don't
read" is simply "don't read", or in Klingon, yIlaDQo'.
The command "yIlaDHa'" is hard to interpret out of context; the best I can
come up with would be something like "read badly!" or "misread!". I
suppose it might have some sort of "un-read" meaning, but lacking a context
I can't really come up with what "un-reading" means.
>..Paul
~mark