tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Oct 26 08:05:17 1997

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: "you will die without honor"



On Fri, 24 Oct 1997 23:40:16 -0700 (PDT) Neal Schermerhorn 
<[email protected]> wrote:

> ghItlh ghunchu'wI':
> 
> >TKD Appendix: {tlhIngan Hol vIjatlhlaHbe'} "I don't speak Klingon."
...
> Here -be' negates what comes directly before it - the ability to perform the
> verb. -be' is behaving as I would expect it. 
... 
> >Power Klingon: {Qo'noSDaq vay' vISovbe'} "I don't know anyone on
> >Kronos."
> >This is clearly negating the concept "know someone on Kronos".  It doesn't
> >have anything to do with "not-knowing" someone.  

nuqjatlh?

> Perhaps it is ambiguous,
> >but the meaning carried by {-be'} can obviously be applied to the
> *entirety*
> >of what it follows, not just the immediately preceding morpheme.
> 
> "I do not know someone on Qo'noS." Well, vay' vISovba', 'ach Qo'noSDaq vay'
> vISovbe'. -be' here is simply negating the verb. Yes, the Qo'noSDaq being
> part of the sentence tempers the use of the suffix, but it still merely
> modifies the syllable just before.

jIQochbe'. The action of the verb is being negated.
 
> In neither of these cases must we assume the -be' negates anything other
> than the immediately preceding syllable. They both work out as similar, if
> not identical, to textbook -be' examples.
> 
> Both of these are very different from Hoch DaSopbe'chugh batlh bIHeghbe' -
> here -be' seems to modify the adverbial. I would have expected *Hoch
> DaSopbe'chugh batlhHa' bIHegh*. 

Meanwhile, this was written in TKD LONG before Okrand had the 
idea of adding {-Ha'}, a VERB suffix, to an adverbial. I think 
this was an early experiment and I think it failed.

> I would translate the original sentence as
> "If you don't eat everything you will, honorably, not die" and be entirely
> correct. So either this construction is ambiguous, and a more accurate
> statement should be made, or this is an old construction obeying ancient
> rules. That seems likely.

jIQochbe'chu'. It just looks rather ugly, but we are stuck with 
it. I typically agree with jupwI', ghunchu'wI', but this time I 
think he reached a bit far, built something on too weak a 
foundation.
 
> Since it's canon, we can't write it off. So I await the backfit... Till
> then, I won't use -be' to modify an adverbial which modifies the sentence in
> which -be' appears.

I doubt any backfit is forthcoming. More likely, there will 
simply be no more examples like this one.
 
> Qermaq

charghwI'




Back to archive top level