tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 19 16:18:29 1997

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RE: KLBC Clipped vs not

jatlh SI'IluD:

> Hu' puS jIghItlh <qoSlIj yIQuch>
> poD mu'tlhegh
> <qaStaHvIS 'oH qoSlIj 'e' yIQuch> 'oH mu'tlhegh'e' naQ
> bolaj'a'

ghobe'.

Your first sentence is ungrammatical, as I explained in another post.  You 
cannot explain it away as being Clipped Klingon, because that's not how 
Clipped Klingon works.  In Clipped Klingon, you generally remove excessive 
prefixes and sometimes suffixes, but not entire words.  Even if you DO remove 
phrases like {qaStaHvIS} (which isn't too unbelievable), your sentence is 
simply wrong.  {Quch} cannot take an object.

{'e'} is an object.  It's a third-person singular pronoun, grammatically 
identical to {'oH}.  You cannot say "be happy that" anymore than you can say 
"be happy it."  You CAN say "Be happy because today is your birthday," or "Be 
happy because of your birthday," but your two sentences above don't work.

Also, about clipping.  We see at least one sentence with {'e'} clipped: 
{bIjatlh 'e' yImev} becomes {jatlh 'e' mev}.  All you do is remove the 
prefixes here, you don't remove the {'e'}.  Although *{jatlh mev} looks like a 
logical extension, it may not be.  Otherwise, I'm sure we'd hear *{jatlh mev} 
instead of {jatlh 'e' mev}.

-- 
SuStel
Beginners' Grammarian
Stardate 97215.6

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