tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 04 11:27:24 1998

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Re: RE: KLBC verb question

On Wed, 4 Nov 1998 08:25:57 -0800 (PST) Steven Boozer 
<[email protected]> wrote:

> : lab SIHwI':
> : > My question is, how would I say "the boy broke the cup with 
> : > the stick"?  The best I could comeup with is:
> : > tu'lum ghormeH ghanjaq lo'ta' loDHom
> : > Is there a better way to say this?
> : 
> : This is grammatically correct, but a bit confusing. It is generally best to
> : put the subject after the *first* verb, and repeat or omit it after the
> : second verb as you like:
> : 
> : <tu'lum ghormeH loDHom, ghanjaq lo'>.
> 
>   "In order for the boy to break the teacup, he used a club."
> 
> While grammatically correct, this still feels a bit odd to me.  In a short
> sentence like this, I would have put the subject at the end:
> 
>  tu'lum ghormeH, ghanjaq lo' loDHom.
>   "In order to break the teacup, the boy used a club."

Just to give another opinion, this feels at least as odd to me 
as placing the subject after the first verb feels to you. I 
think the reason this feels good to you is because IN ENGLISH, 
we use an infinitive (In order to break the teacup), which does 
not identify the subject. Klingon doesn't HAVE infinitives, so 
this is not an issue in Klingon. 

I honestly believe that your Klingon casting here is overly 
influenced by your English translation. In general, I think it is
better to identify your nouns before replacing them with implied 
pronouns. The listener then knows who or what the pronouns refer 
to.

The exception that I have repeatedly seen with this is the use 
of {-meH} with no reference to a subject or object. That really 
is as close to an infinitive as Klingon gets. Okrand does not 
explain these two very different ways to use verbs with {-meH}, 
but in his examples, both exist.

In other words, I would expect to see one of the two following 
sentences:

ghormeH ghanjaq lo' loDHom.

The boy uses a club to break (stuff).

or

tu'lum ghormeH loDHom, ghanjaq lo'

The boy uses the club in order to break the teacup.

You have chosen something that seems to go somewhere between 
these two, using an object with the infinitiveqoq but not a 
subject. That's what seems strange to me about this. To me, it 
sounds like:

He uses the club in order that the boy breaks the teacup.

I know that I'm not using the explicit noun in the same clause 
as you, but I am using the pronoun first and then the noun which 
it has already replaced. It just feels like maybe the pronoun is 
referring to some OTHER noun, since the noun wasn't established 
first. Like Fred used the club so that John breaks the teacup. 
"If you don't break that teacup, I'm going to hit you with this 
club!"
 
> Note that punctuation helps the reader, though it's not required.  With a
> longer sentence, though, I would certainly put the subject after the first
> verb
> as pagh suggests, lest the reader lose track of it.  Another very common
> variation - at least here on the mailing list - is the {X lo'taHvIS} trick:
> 
>  ghanjaq lo'taHvIS, tu'lum ghor loDHom.
>   "While using a club, the boy broke the teacup."

I've never liked this, since it could easily mean, "While using 
a club (to scratch his back) the boy broke the teacup (by 
dropping it on the stone floor)." The simultenaity of using the 
club and breaking the cup makes no grammatical connection 
between the use of the club and the breaking of the cup beyond 
coincidental timing. Maybe he was scratching his back with the 
club and found that perfect spot and ooooh it felt so good he 
forgot that he was holding a teacup. Smash! Do'Ha' no' tu'lum 
tI'laHbe' 'ej tu'lumvam lo'laH law' Hoch lo'laH puS. paw Heghbat 
poH.

{-meH} tells you that the purpose of the using of the club is to 
break the cup. This is a much clearer expression here.
 
> Chacun a son gout.
> 
> : pagh
> : Beginners' Grammarian
> 
> 
> _________________________________________________________________________
> Voragh                            "Grammatici certant et adhuc sub judice
> Ca'Non Master of the Klingons      lis est."         Horace (Ars Poetica)
> 

charghwI' 'utlh

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