tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 17 02:30:08 1997

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Klingon words for "subject" and "object"; ghunlu'wI'



  A few days ago one of the pabpo'pu' mentioned in passing a lack of Klingon
words for grammatical "subject" and "object".  Could "subject" be e.g.
{vangwI'}? (if ambiguity could be avoided with "movie actor" in the frequent
discussions in Klingon about Star Trek episodes).
  If so, "object" could be {vanglu'wI'} - with the obvious proviso.

  As stated in other messages, {X-lu') looks impersonal if you go by the word
order but passive if you go by how pronoun prefixes behave with it: there is
enough of the passive about it for {X-lu'wI'} to be worthy of consideration.
  The same route was followed in Earth languages by the suffix {-r}, which
appears in Irish (one of the Celtic languages; their original home was central
Europe) as a pure impersonal subject suffix <instead> of a personal pronoun
suffix, and in Latin as a passivizer <added after> a personal pronoun suffix.
In Latin the usual way to specify "impersonal subject" with a verb that can
have a personal subject, is to make it passive, whether the verb is transitive
or intransitive. Whether each of {tlhInganpu' wIleghlu'} or Latin {Tlingani
videmur} for "we Klingons are seen" is called a passive, or an active with an
impersonal subject and the agreement concords distorted, is a matter of
definition and convention.


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