tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Apr 16 07:58:24 1997
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Re: KLBC-inflection
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>Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 09:41:52 -0700 (PDT)
>From: [email protected]
>
>do you think Klingon has inflection (+ agreement, + tense)?
You might want to check the dictionary yourself and see if our
understanding of your questions is right...
Inflection... well, Klingon has verb-conjugations by prefixes dependant on
number and person of subject and object, and some suffixes like possessive
suffixes have a form of agreement. Tense is not marked, but there are
aspect-markers as suffixes to the verbs.
As to agreement more specifically, conjugated verbs must agree, of course,
in their prefixes with the number and person of their subjects and
objects. Klingon does not have true adjectives, so there is no adjectival
agreement. Pronouns obviously have to agree with their antecedents in
number and gender (Klingon does not have male/female gender, but it *does*
distinguish between sentient and non-sentient nouns, having different
third-person pronouns for them in singular and plural). Also, possessive
suffixes agree with the possessor in number and person, and in the case of
first- and second-person suffixes they also agree with the thing-possessed
in gender (i.e. sentience).
> Do you see any possiblity of case marking by the pronouns and be the
>positions that the nouns fill?
Klingon nouns and pronouns are not marked for case except by position.
Nouns which are not subjects or objects have case-like suffixes, which
really seem to be more postpositions than true case suffixes (note the way
they migrate to the ends of modifying verbs). Pronouns behave no
differently than nouns. Well, there is one case: in "genitive"
constructions (possession), common nouns use a noun-noun construct,
possessor followed by possession, while pronouns become suffixes on the
possession.
Is this what you were looking for? Are you filling out some sort of
checklist?
~mark
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