tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Mar 14 09:45:29 1995
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Re: Next question of a newbie (in tlh H :-))
>Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 14:01:33 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: [email protected] (CHRISTOPH KRUEGER)
>Hi grammarians (and others),
> I want so say:
> Your ship is interesting : Daj Dujraj
Good.
> I am engineer and luckily I am skilled for energy fields:
> jonwI' jIH 'ej Do' HoSchemmey jIpo'vaD
OK, remember to proofread everything you right. Let's look at the last
word. "*jIpo'vaD". It looks like the verb "po'" with the verb-prefix
"jI-" on it... and a *NOUN* suffix "-vaD". Ooooooops. I would have said
simply "... 'ej Do' HoSchemmey vIpo'", perhaps stretching the meaning of
"po'" slightly so its direct object is the thing you're expert in. As you
have it, I'm also wondering what grammatical function HoSchemmey is doing.
It's not marked with a type 5, but it's not the object of "po'" since you
have the no-object prefix, jI-, on it.
> You have to tell me as soon as you can give me a function:
> chojanIS Qu' tunoblaHDI'
ja'nIS, otherwise good. Maybe even SIbI' first, just to emphasize the
immediacy.
Now, the "Qu' tunoblaH" clause is correct, and what you want to say... but
not obvious, so I'm going to discuss it a little bit.
Properly, "You can give me a task" is "jIHvaD Qu' bonoblaH." See why? Qu'
is the object of "nob": you give a task. "jIH" is the indirect object, and
takes -vaD (check the addendum for stuff about this). Okrand, however, has
given us examples of using prefixes as sort of a shorthand for this. So we
have "ro'qegh'Iwchab HInob" for "Give me the rokeg blood-pie" (jIHvaD
ro'qegh'Iwchab yInob) in one of the tapes. So your "Qu' tunoblaH" is a
legitimate short form for "jIHvaD Qu' bonoblaH."
~mark