tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Sep 23 22:08:03 1997
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Re: yIjey'lu'
ja' SuStel:
>Tell me what {yIjeylu'} means. "Him" is still part of this, but "he" must be
>the one who is defeated. If you're giving a command to "you," "you" obvously
>cannot perform this action, as the person who does is explicitly unspecified.
It means the same thing as {Dajeylu'} but as an imperative, not a statement.
"One defeats you -- make it so." The {-lu'} suffix removes the "him" idea;
the {yI-} prefix makes the object "you". The only person mentioned here is
"you"; the {-lu'} is inappropriate only if you insist that imperatives must
apply to the subject.
>How about this one
>
>HIjeylu'
>
>What does this mean? "Someone defeats me -- command"? It makes no sense
>whatsoever. Who's doing what to whom?
I agree, this is semantically overloaded. The only prefixes permitted when
{-lu'} is attached are the ones that usually indicate singular third-person
object, and {HI-} does not fit that category.
>pejeylu'
>
>Again, there is no sense here. Who does what? What is done to whom? Where
>does the "you" come in? (Even if it's not the subject, it's given to "you,"
>and "you" has got to do something with it.)
And again, I agree that this makes no sense -- because the prefix is not a
third-person-singular, which is required when {-lu'} is used.
>Ultimately, I think the problem here is that you're trying to translate
>English passive voice into Klingon, which doesn't have a passive voice.
No, I'm trying to explore what the concept of "imperative" means and how
far it can be stretched. I once put forth the possibility of having an
imperative prefix on a relative clause inside a {law'/puS} construction,
which is on the surface even weirder than using {yI-} and {-lu'} at the
same time. But if you pull out the "imperative" concept and apply it to
the sentence as a whole after interpreting it as a statement, it works.
Is that an appropriate way to deal with imperatives? If not, why not?
-- ghunchu'wI'