tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jun 18 22:37:54 1998
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Re: SuvwI'bom
ja' HomDoq:
>how do you determine what is the subject in Klingon?
>e.g. if I want to translate "I am the captain.", I'd say
>
>{HoD jIH} if it answers "Who are you?" and
>
>{jIH ghaH HoD'e'} if it answers "Who is the captain?"
>("As for the captain, that would be me...")
English plays fast and loose with the word order of questions. In
the question "Who are you?", it sounds to me like "you" is actually
the subject, and your {HoD jIH} answer matches. But in "Who is the
captain", I hear "Who" as the subject, and would answer it the other
way around from you: {HoD jIH}. Both of these come out as the same
thing in Klingon, the way I see them.
>i.e., I choose the known thing as the subject and the unknown
>as the object.
That doesn't work for me in every case, as you can see by the way I
look at "Who is the captain?" Try this example: "Who lives in the
city?" The unknown is definitely the subject here: {veng Dab 'Iv?}
>(Of course that's why {SoH 'Iv} confuses me :-)
I'm not confused by this, but I can't work it out without taking into
account the extra information recently revealed by Okrand, that {'Iv}
and {nuq} *can* act like pronouns. It's no more confusing than some
of the other rules we have to live with.
-- ghunchu'wI'