tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Nov 21 20:14:10 1998
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Re: RE:
This is a good answer in terms of telling him what not to do,
but he could probably use more help in terms of how to say this
while not doing what he is supposed to not do. I'll make a stab
at it.
On Fri, 20 Nov 1998 18:14:57 -0800 (PST) "Andeen, Eric"
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Welcome to the list, Patrick. My name is pagh, and I am the current
> Beginners' Grammarian for the list. It's my job to help beginners learn
> Klingon. Whenever you have a post you want help with, mark it for my
> attention by putting the letters KLBC in the subject line.
>
> lab Patrick Masterson:
> >
> > Savan.
> >
> > Hello. I had a few questions.
> >
> > wa'. Can you use questions as sentences for use with 'e'?
> > as in the following:
> > qatlh nuch HoH yaS 'e' vISov. (I know why the officer killed the
> > coward.)
>
> Wow. Quite a choice for a first question...
>
> In any case, it is best just to avoid it until we know for certain.
It does involve a bit of complexity, but I'd cast it as:
"I know why the officer killed the coward."
yaSvaD nuch HoHmoHbogh meq vISov.
[Literally: "I know the reason which caused the officer to kill
the coward."]
The reason questions don't work in a "Sentence As Object"
construction is that the pronoun {'e'} is supposed to represent
the entire preceeding sentence, but in your example, {'e'} is
not representing the question. It is representing the ANSWER to
the question.
Think about it. You don't really mean to say, "I know that why
did the officer kill the coward?" now, do you? What is it you
know? You know the reason. The officer had a reason for killing
the coward. You know what that reason is.
Also, in TKD Okrand doesn't provide any examples of using {-moH}
on a transitive verb. In HolQeD we discovered how this is done
from one of the Skybox cards he wrote.
Basically, we know in TKD that for {-moH} and intransitive verbs:
[subject of the verb root] [verb]moH [subject of causation]
Transitive verbs work like this:
[Subj. of verb root]vaD [obj. of verb root] [verb]moH [Subj. of causation]
In other words, the subject of verb-moH is still the one doing
the causing. The subject of the verb root becomes the indirect
object. The direct object of the verb root is the direct object
of the verb+moH. I hope that makes sense.
SC = Subject of Causation
RVS = Root Verb Subject
RVO = Root Verb Object
TV = Transitive Verb
IV = Intranstive Verb
[RVS] [IV]moH [SC].
[RVS]vaD [RVO] [TV]moH [SC].
Does that help?
> pagh
> Beginners' Grammarian
charghwI' 'utlh