tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Aug 23 10:46:02 1999
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Have a nice day!
ghunchu'wI' wrote:
: >>Live long and prosper
:
: The phrase as spoken in "Amok Time" by Vulcans was undeniably given as
: an imperative. I choose to believe that is its real intent.
: [....]
: No, both of these are given as imperatives. The exclamation point is
: not what turns a sentence into a command. Adding the words "may you"
: is cheating. It changes the phrase; they're not there when *I* say it.
An order is, in theory, something that can be accomplished by or that the
listener can choose to carry out or not. E.g. "Come here!" "Kill the
prisoner!" "Fire the weapon!"
A person has no control over the length of his life, other than committing or
avoiding suicide. "LLAP" in this case is merely a wish - somewhat ironic at
the end of "Amok Time", as Spock ruefully commented to T'Pau.
: > Or do you think "Have a nice day" is also an order?
:
: Of course it's an order. That's what an imperative statement *is*,
: grammatically speaking.
Rubbish. This too is a wish, not an imperative. "May you..." is usually
clipped off of such common and banal wishes in greeting/leave taking
formulae.
Not that any Klingon would ever say it in any form. We all remember what
happened to the foolish Terran who commented blandly {'IH jaj, qar'a'?} ("Nice
day, isn't it?") to the Klingon merchant at the beginning of "Power Klingon",
don't we?
Consider too the commonly heard send-off {batlh bIHeghjaj} "Die honorably!",
which is grammatically a wish or exhortation in Klingon, not an imperative.
(Of course, a commander could always phrase it as an order {batlh yIHegh!},
say
when ordering a crewman to go on a suicide mission. Isn't it nice that the
language allows such subtleties? <g>)
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons