tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jan 31 07:01:24 1995
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Re: De'wI' mughwI'
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: De'wI' mughwI'
- Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 10:01:19 EST
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>; from "Alan Anderson" at Jan 31, 95 6:58 am
According to Alan Anderson:
>
> jInIDtaH. jInIDqu'taH.
maj.
> <<*subject* mImughlaHbe' 'e' muberghmoH>> vIja'Ha'
>
> Okay, I get the lack of a "sentence as subject" construction. But I don't
> understand your objection to {muberghmoH} -- doesn't that mean "it causes me to
> be irritable?"
Two problems with it. First, if you think about it, "it" is a
thinly veiled reference to the previous sentence, which means
that you are trying to get "it" to do for you at the subject
end of your sentence what {'e'} does on the object end of a
sentence. In other words, you are creating your very own
"sentence as subject" construction, and as I explained, that is
not legal in Klingon. That's why I objected to it. Yes, it is a
common thing for people to try to do, but it doesn't work.
My SECOND problem with {muberghmoH} is the word the preceeds
it. Combine the pronoun {'e'} with the verb suffix {-moH} and
now the "it" you are using as a subject becomes the causative
agent, and the "me" indicated as the object in your prefix
becomes the subject of the verb stem {bergh}. Great. So what is
{'e'} doing there? Isn't it supposed to be the object of the
verb {muberghmoH}? But you already have another object set up
with the prefix {mu-}. Which object is the real object? The
whole thing becomes a muddled mess with no set of rules to help
untangle it, because you didn't follow rules while you created
it.
The mess part began when you sought to build a sentence as
subject construction. There are no rules for doing that, so you
took the sentence as object construction and bent it around,
seeking to get it to do what it was not designed to do, and
wound up with something that made a lot more sense to you as
you assembled it than it will ever make to anyone else who
tries to take it apart and extract its meaning.
Don't misunderstand me. You are not evil or bad or anything.
You just made an initial mistake of not recognizing what a
"sentence as subject" illegal construction looks like. Since
you did not recognize that what you were setting out to do was
illegal, then instead of recasting the thought into a legal
construction, you set out to build the illegal construction.
Any attempt you could make at that point would be doomed to
failure, but you couldn't recognize that because you didn't
realize that the root idea behind what you were trying to do
was illegal.
It is not that nobody has figured out HOW to do this RIGHT yet.
It is that this is not allowed at all within the structure of
the language. Meanwhile, in every case I've encountered so far,
sentences like this can be recast using other constructions.
> Let my rephrase my complaint:
Now, we are getting somewhere.
> {*subject* mImughlaHbe'mo' muberghmoHlu'.}
Change the "m" to a "w" at the beginning of {mImughlaHbe'mo'}
and I'll be happier. Now, you are grammatically correct.
"Because we cannot translate 'subject', I am caused to be
irritable." Note that this would probably be simpler as:
*subject* wImughlaHbe'mo' jIbergh.
If you don't have a definite noun as the subject of causation,
you are probably better off to drop the issue of causation and
get straight to the root verb. {-moHlu'} is not really all that
interesting a suffix combination in this kind of setting. You
have causation nailed with {-mo'}, so you don't need it echoed
in your main verb.
> I guess if I'm not using "I can't translate it" as a subject, I probably should
> make /myself/ the subject. {*subject* mImughlaHbe'mo' jIberghmoH. Dub'a'?}
Well, now you have a suffix {-moH} which expects an object, but
you are using a prefix {jI-} which implies no object. I would
either drop the {-moH} or confess your participation in your
frustration:
*subject* wImughlaHbe'mo' jIbergh'eghmoH.
> <<De'wI' muchwI' ja'lu'pu'>> vIja'chu'be'
> "Someone has reported a computer's translator." Is this another word-order problem?
No. It is a spelling problem. That's {mugh}, not {much}. "A
computer's translator has been reported."
> {ja'lu'pu' De'wI' muchwI'} then. "A translator has been reported."
> Oh! Oops! May I say {Hivqa' veqlargh}? {"mugh" vIjatlh vIHech. lughbe'bej "much".}
This word order is much worse. Now, you have an explicit
subject and an indefinite one at the same time, and no object.
Reject!
> De' chonobmo' ~mark qatlho'neS.
> -- ghunchu'wI'
charghwI'
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