tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Sep 23 11:24:37 1997
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Re: yIjey'lu'
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>Date: Sat, 20 Sep 1997 20:42:42 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Alan Anderson <[email protected]>
>
>Tad Stauffer writes:
>> {vaj Qaghlu'DI' peQuch!} Hmm... For some reason, I don't want to have
>>one verb here with an indefinite subject, and then use the imperative with a
>>definite plural subject.
>
>jIH munuQbe'. It seems fine to *me*...
>
>> It seems really weird and contradictory, however to
>>use imperative prefixes with the suffix {-lu'}. That is, it seems to me that
>>could you use {yIjeylu'} to mean "Be defeated!"...,
>
>[SFX: a mind stretching and reaching a new shape] *creeeeeeak.....twang!*
>That's...interesting. Very...interesting. At first glance, it's odd. At
>second glance, it looks like it works.
Not to me it doesn't.
>>but it would be impossible
>>to use something like {yIQuchlu'} "Be happy" that would be said to people in
>>general, instead of a defined group. Just a thought.
>
>Yeah, the {-lu'} suffix on an intransitive verb, imperative or not, doesn't
>work for me.
Don't get so hung up on thinking -lu' equals passive voice. It doesn't;
it's impersonal, and that makes a difference. For example, consider some
concepts that are semantically transitive in English but syntactically
intransitive. My usual example is "participate." Participation implies
something that you participate in, but the "object" is syntactically the
object of the preposition "in", and not the verb. Because of that, we
can't transitivize it in English. You can't say "*The conference was
participated in by several hundred people," or "*The party was not well
participated in." These sentences don't sound right. But if you think
"something participated in..." you can do it no problem. "Did ANYone
come?" "Yeah, something-unspecified participated in the discussion" (we
can't say "the discussion was participated in"). In Welsh, the concept "to
bring X" is expressed as "to come with X" (it is possible to distinguish
bringing someone from accompanying him, with proper use of prepositions).
Welsh, like Klingon, uses an impersonal. It's quite all right to say, in
written Welsh, "Daethpywd a'r het i'r stafell", lit. "there was a coming
with the hat to the room" or "one brought the hat to the room" instead of
"the hat was brought to the room."
We've seen "quSDaq ba'lu''a'?" in canon; I have no problem wrapping my head
around it: is there a sitting going on in the chair? Is one sitting in the
chair? Passives don't handle oblique objects very well, since they can
only move direct objects into the subject position. Impersonals don't have
that problem: they have an implied subject already, the object, direct or
oblique, can stay right where it is and get whatever emphasis it needs.
{Quchlu'} makes sense to me: someone/something was happy. There was
happiness going on. It's not very helpful without some other information,
like where and when, but it makes sense.
Using imperatives on it, however, doesn't work for me. The only possible
excuse for it is the way that -lu' reverses subject and object prefixes (so
it uses prefixes suitable for subjects of the person/number that its
objects are). So {*yIQuchlu'} is definitely wrong, even if we allow this
argument, since yI- is used for second-person (sing. or pl.) subject and
third-person singular object, which means that under -lu' reversal it would
be third-person singular "subject" (the impersonal subject is considered
third-person singular when figuring this reversal, according to TKD) and
second-person object. But {Quch} takes no object! It would be the
imperative counterpart to {*DaQuchlu'} or {*boQuchlu'}, which mean
something like "you are happied," which makes no sense. This argument
would support something like {?yIjeylu'}, since it would be the counterpart
of {Dajeylu'} (which makes sense), but intuitively it doesn't work for me.
The imperativeness of yI- is somehow more strongly associated with the
subject, too strongly to be shifted around with -lu' reversal. It would
sound like you're ordering the indefinite subject... in which case you must
be addressing it, so it's not indefinite. This one doesn't work for me.
~mark
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