tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Aug 26 16:58:23 1997
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Re: defective verbs
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>Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 14:01:48 -0700 (PDT)
>From: "Eduardo Fonseca" <[email protected]>
>
>Greetings all
>
>Is there in klingon defective verbs, that not allow
>the 1rst person of singular, as to abolish, to colour, to compute?
>I don't know if you can use it in english, but in portuguese
>you must not use this kind of verbs.
Well, in English these verbs aren't defective: first-person singular goes
very naturally in "I abolish Sunday parties," "I color the box red," "I
compute the value of pi." I don't think English has many defective verbs,
certainly none I can think of that are lacking a first-person singular
(Lessee, the verb "can" (as in "I can see you") lacks an infinitive, and
probably so does the "will" in "I will go" (not to be confused with "will"
in the sense of to intend something)).
Klingon, so far as we know, has only regular verbs (with the possible
exception of the "copula" which is really pronouns used as verbs), so no
verbs are defective in that sense. There is the cultural taboo against
using "-vIp" in first-person without negating it, but that's a suffix, not
a verb.
~mark
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