tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Mar 02 20:40:10 1997
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Re: "-lu'"
loQ SuStelvaD jItlhIj. nom jIjanglaH vaj jIvangta' jIH.
> This is qoror. I'd like to know: where should you put the main
>noun in
>a passive sentence with "-lu'"?
The "main noun" must be the object in such a sentence. The verb suffix
{-lu'} is defined as "indefinite subject". It means that the subject is
"someone" or "something" unspecified. While sentences with {-lu'} often
are translated into English using passive voice, that's not really what
the suffix indicates.
> In English, it is considered the subject, and
>in Latin, it is in the nominative, which is almost always the subject.
>(In the
>rare other usages, it is the appositive.)
There isn't a "passive voice" in Klingon as such. Trying to think of
{-lu'} as a "passivizing" suffix will often confuse you into trying to
apply non-Klingon grammatical labels to sentences which use it.
>But I've noticed in jatmey and other
>sources (but no canonical ones) that it is sometimes put at the beginning
>of the
>sentence.
Canonical examples from the "Useful Klingon Expressions" appendix of TKD:
{tlhaqwIj chu'Ha'lu'pu'} "My chronometer has stopped."
{naDev tlhInganpu' tu'lu'} "There are Klingons around here."
{bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay'} "Revenge is a dish best served cold."
The "main noun" in these is the object, which always precedes the verb.
> It is called the subject (in English) because you need to have a
>subject and a verb to make a whole sentence. Sometimes the subject is
>implied,
>such as imperative sentences, and that would exception would have to work more
>with Klingon. But how does Klingon work with the passive voice?
While one usually needs a subject and a verb to make a whole sentence in
Klingon, the verb suffix {-lu'} effectively takes the place of the subject.
The above examples in TKD can be more literally translated using the
"impersonal" rather than the "passive":
"Someone/something has mis-activated my chronometer."
"One finds Klingons here."
"As soon as one serves cold revenge, the dish is always very good."
-- ghunchu'wI'