tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jun 06 06:49:56 1997
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Re: jajlo'
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>Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 19:16:09 -0700 (PDT)
>From: "Q'ISto'va (Eliseo d'Annunzio, Esq.)" <[email protected]>
>
>On Thu, 5 Jun 1997, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
>
>> Can {Qong} take an object? Maybe. In English we can say "I slept the
>> night away." Maybe you can in Klingon. Maybe in Klingon it would be
>> correct to say "I slept the hard bed," meaning that was the place I lay
>> while sleeping. Or maybe even perhaps "I slept the attractive officer,"
>> though the sleep/sex association is likely a bit too human to expect. But
>> the object would NOT be the person who is made to sleep by someone else:
>> that's what -moH is for.
>
>I would disagree on this, even using a phrase like "I slept the hard bed"
>would not be on equivalent lines of "I slept the night through" even
>in Klingon. In the later you're providing an action which was made with
>the use of an object (the hard bed) while in the former you're indicating
>a continuous action that took place during a certain time period.
You misunderstand. I'm not proposing any of these are correct. I'm just
tossing out examples of things I could see possibly happening that we just
don't know about.
So far as we can tell, {Qong} does not take an object. I'm just looking at
ideas, maybe it *does* take an object and we just haven't been told what it
is? What possible objects might it take? The place slept might be the
object (though without knowing that I'd use -Daq to indicate it properly).
The time-duration slept might be the object (though I'd use a qaStaHvIS
phrase to express this). The dreams you had might be the object. I can
already think of two or three other possibilities. I don't happen to think
any of these are particularly likely to be the object, I'm just noting that
we really don't know (and thus I'd tend to operate under the assumption
that none of them is).
>I'm not sure how well my grammar is, but I think you're more or less after
>the following...
>
>QongDaqDaq let vIQongpu'
>(I slept on the hard bed)
Except that you'd need "QongDaq letDaq jIQongpu'", otherwise you're right.
This is straightforward, no-object usage. I was musing that
*theoretically* for all we know it might be right to say "*QongDaq let
vIQong". I don't think so either, but it MIGHT.
>yaS 'IH vIQongpu'
>(I slept with the attractive officer... You can't use -Daq with yaS as you
>cannot sleep "in" or "at" or "to" an officer... though sleeping *on*...
>hrmmm... the exception which disproves the rule? :) )
This presumes that you CAN have the person who accompanies you in sleep as
the object, which I (and you, so far as I understand) don't really believe
(but supplied as a possibility). I would say you need to use subordinate
clauses like "jIQongtaHvIS mutlhej yaS 'IH" or something.
>But I'm afraid this would be just taken as literally having sleept
>with the officer, not as in English been taken to mean "I had sex with the
>officer". For that, I believe it would be something on the line of:
I *said* I thought it was unlikely the sleep with/sex idiom translated.
>yaS 'IH vInga'pu'
>(I had sex with the attractive officer)
No, "?nga'" is not attested as a verb in itself. From what we've seen it
would have to be "manga'chuq yaS 'IH jIH je." And I agree that you'd
probably better say it outright.
>I was almost tempted to use -chuq in the action, but remembered this only
>applies to plural subjects, but I think it's pretty obvious who is doing
>what with whom.
Yes, the officer and the speaker and doing things to one another. That's
why (so far as I can understand) the note by "nga'chuq" says "always
subject."
>juStaHvIS jIQongpu'
>(I slept the night through... literally: While the night passed, I slept.)
qaStaHvIS ram [naQ] jIQong.
>I'm not sure about -moH in the sense of Qong, one does not cause
>themselves to sleep, they just do it.
Yes, but I might say "qaQongmoH", meaning "I make you sleep", "I put you to
sleep," etc.
~mark
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