tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 30 07:17:39 1996
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Re: lu' misused as passivizer
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>Date: Tue, 30 Jul 1996 02:37:31 -0700
>From: "A.Appleyard" <[email protected]>
> "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]> wrote:-
>> This deserves comment, and in DIvI' Hol for clarity. [[email protected]
>> was] trying to use "*ghunlu'wI'" for "programs" working on "thing which is
>> programmed." I don't believe you can do that. This is part of the problem
>> with thinking of "-lu'" as a passivizer. It isn't. ...
>He wasn't the first to be so confused! Long ago as the Indo-European languages
>developed, Celtic (then spoken in much of central Europe) developed a verb
>form {-r}, meaning the same as Klingon {-lu'}. The same suffix got into early
>Latin, which used it as a passivizer, e.g. {amat} -> {amatur}. But it would be
>useful to put *{-lu'wI'} in a list of suggestions and queries for Marc Okrand.
Indeed so; Celtic languages have impersonals as well, and use them to great
effect (I've seen impersonals in Welsh on intransitive verbs as well,
showing how they differ from true passives).
As to *{-lu'wI'}, if it exists it's doubtful that it is in that form (if
you mean a suffix to nominalize the object). We know that -ghach has this
meaning sometimes (see the article in HolQeD), and the meanings of -lu' and
- -wI' in TKD simply contradict this construction. It might be nice to have,
but even languages you use every day are missing it. Strange, obscure
languages like English don't have this construction, and somehow manage.
Oh, English has -er which is similar to -wI', and even -ee for the converse
(employer/employee), but -ee is not extremely productive. We know what a
"reader" is, but "*readee" is not correct English. You need to say "thing
[which is] read." A killer kills a victim (not a killee), but a victim
needn't be the victim of a killer. In English, you often have to do the
unthinkably long construction of "thing which is Xed"; I suspect that in
general in Klingon you'll need to do "Doch Xlu'bogh". THAT is your passive
- -wI'.
~mark
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