tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Sep 23 22:08:13 1997
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Re: yIjey'lu'
ja' charghwI':
>I DO see why this doesn't work. For a long time, I've been a
>proponant of translating {-lu'} as passive voice, yet
>recognizing that {-lu'} and the passive voice are not completely
>identical. You now have discovered a place where they are quite
>unlike one another. Why?
>
>Dajey - You defeat him.
>Dajeylu' - You are defeated. One defeats you.
>yIjey - [You] Defeat him!
>*yIjeylu' - [You] *Be defeated. Make it so that one defeats
>[You].
>
>See how incredibly awkward that last translation gets? I don't
>think it works at all.
It gets awkward because English doesn't have an easy way to combine
the indefinite "one" with an imperative idea. But the passive voice
"be defeated" translation doesn't seem awkward at all.
>I accept that there are uses of {-lu'} that required some
>serious head twisting in my past. {ba'lu'} in TKD was very
>confusing until I recognized that {-lu'} simply behaves
>differently with intransitive verbs such that passive voice
>translation does not apply, but the indefinite ("one") subject
>translation DOES apply. Now, you suggest that with imperatives,
>the passive voice DOES apply, but the indefinite ("one) subject
>translation does NOT apply.
I'm not proposing that one translation applies to the exclusion of
another. But you are certainly aware that some translations are a
lot more amenable to well-worded sentences than others, and in this
case a strict indefinite subject is unwieldy.
[Remember also that {quSDaq ba'lu''a'} *is* translated using the
passive voice in TKD: "Is this seat taken?"]
>jIQochqu'.
>
>Unless we get some confirmation about this from Okrand, I will
>not accept this. I will not use the construction, and if someone
>writes it to me, I'll discount it as a gross grammatical error
>and ignore it.
It's odd enough that I also will not use it, but I find it entirely
understandable.