tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Mar 13 11:00:25 1998

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Re: poH qelDI' tlhIngan Hol mu'tlheghmey

Mark E. Shoulson:
: {'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.

Sustel: 
: 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.

For those stubborn few who still insist that {'ej} implies *only*
synchronicity and never sequence, reversing the order of clauses in a
sentence should have no effect whatsoever on the meaning.  But it often
does.  For example:

     teplIj yIwoH 'ej pa'lIjDaq yIjaH!
     Pick up your baggage and go to your room! (CK) 

implies an obvious sequence of events (at least to me), whereas

     pa'lIjDaq yIjaH 'ej teplIj yIwoH!
     Go to your room and pick up your baggage!

makes no sense at all if you and your luggage are both in the lobby.  It
would make sense, though, if you've left your baggage upstairs in your room,
naively expecting someone will bring it down to the desk for you upon check
out.  Or imagine a Klingon mother telling her rambunctious child that dinner
is ready:

     yIba'choH 'ej qagh yISop!
     Sit down and eat your gagh!

This is something quite different from

     qagh yISop 'ej yIba'choH!
     Eat your qagh and sit down!

which may be more appropriate if you're advising someone to sit down as an
aide to digestion after eating a rushed meal, say, while standing in a
crowded {Do Qe'}.  In these cases, translating {'ej} by "and then" or simply
"then" is quite acceptable.  But when you can successfully reverse the
clauses with no loss in meaning, you cannot translate {'ej} "and then". For
example, the statement

     tlhIngan jIH 'ej tera'ngan SoH.
     I'm a Klingon and you're a Terran.

is obviously the same as 

     tera'ngan SoH 'ej tlhIngan jIH.
     You're a Terran and I'm a Klingon.

at least logically.  There may, however, be some stylistic emphasis in
putting one clause first (or even last, considering the "backwards" OVS
normal Klingon sentence), but I'm not sure we would understand the nature of
that emphasis.  And one can always tag the subject with {-'e'}, use {qoj}
"and/or" or use different intonations (something we know very little about)
and gestures for even more emphasis.  This *stylistic* variation in the use
of {'ej} is worth exploring, but there's certainly no *inherent* implication
either way in the word.

Voragh

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