tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Aug 28 09:12:34 1997

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Re: defective verbs

On Tue, 26 Aug 1997 17:13:38 -0700 (PDT) "Mark E. Shoulson" 
<[email protected]> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> 
> >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...
> (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)).

But these are irregular. No form of "to be" has an infinitive 
except for "be". What you've said of "will" (my favorite verb) 
is also true of "am", "are", "is", "was" and "were". For "can" 
we have the synonym phrase "be able" which can take an 
infinitive.
 
> 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.

But what about the missing prefixes? In that sense, all Klingon 
verbs are "defective", but the missing prefixes are relatively 
useless. I've certainly heard many weak attempts to "need" these 
missing combinations of subject-object, but none have been even 
mildly interesting. This degree of defectiveness is quite 
comfortably absorbed in my opinion.

Meanwhile, this smells somewhat of yet another intense interest 
in an arcane detail without a matching interest in the global 
functionality of the language as a whole.
 
> ~mark

charghwI'

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