tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Oct 26 11:21:19 1997

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RE: "you will die without honor"

[email protected] on behalf of William H. Martin wrote:
> > 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.

I'm not sure that Qermaq's and ghunchu'wI''s interpretations are entirely at 
odds with each other.  Clearly, the sentence in question shows the {-be'} 
negating the adverbial.  But there's no reason to think this *isn't* an older 
form of grammar which isn't in TKD.  It *might* instead be that {-be'} can 
negate adverbials anywhere, but then why haven't we seen it elsewhere (unless 
I'm forgetting another example)?

If I had to come up with an explanation, I'd guess that {-be'} once did modify 
the adverbial, or the entire adverbial plus verb, or whatever.  In more recent 
times, a movement for more precision led to using a different negative suffix, 
{-Ha'}, on adverbials, and {-be'} can no longer do that job.

SuStel
Stardate 97820.1

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