tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jan 12 11:45:01 1997
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Re: <'e'> lo'
On Sun, 12 Jan 1997, mayq wrote:
|Is it legal to just have a sentence that begins with <'e'>? I thought it was
|to signify that the preceding sentence was used as an object, but if there
|is no preceding sentence, then why are we using it?
|I mean if I said something like:
| bommey vI'Ij 'e' vItIv.
|And someone responded with (as SuStel might recall that this is similar to
|our little conversation):
| 'e' vItIv je jIH!
|Is that legal? I know it works in English, but does it work in Klingon?
Yes it's legal to use it this way, just not very common. Krankor addressed
this in his very first "From the Grammarian's Desk" (HolQeD 1.2 (1992):
4-5) where he made a case based on the rules in TKD:
"Klingon has two special *pronouns*, 'e' and net, which refer to the
previous sentence as a whole....They are always treated as the object of
the verb....What is a single sentence in English is often *two* sentences
in Klingon." (TKD 6.2.5: p. 65, emphasis added)
Summarizing his argument, Krankor reminds us that since 'e' is actually a
pronoun, it can be used just like any other pronoun:
bommey vItIv.
bIH vItIv je jIH.
The clincher comes from canon (of course!) -- which Krankor apparently
wasn't aware of even though ST6 was released the previous year. After her
father's assassination, Azetbur is being advised by her General Staff to
attack the Federation while the Empire still can. She replies:
'e' neHbe' vavoy.
That wasn't what my father wanted.
-- Voragh