tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Mar 13 09:48:13 1998

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: poH qelDI' tlhIngan Hol mu'tlheghmey

From: Mark E. Shoulson <[email protected]>
>{'ej} doesn't imply or forbid time-sequences _by itself_... but then I
>don't see that "and" does in English, on the whole.  In "I ate and was
>satisfied," the sequence is there, yes, but not implied by the "and": it's
>implied by the meaning of what we were talkking about.  {jISop 'ej jIyon}
>(possible stretch of {yon} to a more specific meaning) is perfectly
>acceptable, and in no way implies that my satisfaction happened before or
>at the time of my eating, no more than the English does.  "I sent the
>letter and you got it" has ordering, but the "and" isn't what caused the
>ordering.  {jabbI'ID vIlab 'ej DaHev} is completely fine.

These sentences are perfectly fine because one follows from another.  One
action is very dependent on the other.  But much of what I've seen with
{'ej} from some people goes something like this:

lupwI' tIjHa' 'ej Soj je'.
He got off the jitney and bought some food.

and it is meant to mean, "He got off the jitney, AND THEN he bought some
food."  While this sentence is perfectly grammatical, I can't see any
logical reason that it should be connected with a conjunction.  It CAN be.
And we've seen several Klingon sentences where the English would have used a
conjunction, while the Klingon uses several sentences in sequence.  This
suggests that, stylistically, it may be more correct to use {'ej} for things
that are truly "and," not "and then."

I would think of your sentence, for example, as "I sent the transmission,
and you read it," though not necessarily "I read the transmission, AND THEN
you read it."  It COULD mean that, but it may not.  A number of people tend
to use {'ej}, I think, to mean the latter one specifically.  This seems to
be done in Klingon with multiple sentences: {jabbI'ID vIlab.  DaHev.} or
suffixes: {jabbI'ID vIlabDI' DaHev.}

There's no hard-and-fast evidence to point to.  We're not talking about a
grammatical rule, I think, but a stylistic tendency which we've observed.
It has been contradicted at times.  If I see someone using lots of
sequence-{'ej}s, I'm going to say something.

SuStel
Stardate 98196.6

Back to archive top level