tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Aug 24 15:34:41 1999
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Re: Have a nice day!
ja' Voragh:
>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!"
Maybe we're talking past each other here. I'm considering the grammatical
structure here, not the idea behind it. "Have a nice day" is certainly a
statement intended as a wish, but it's undeniably an imperative phrasing.
>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.
There are many imperative statements that express "wish" or "hope" ideas.
"Get well soon." "Break a leg." "Enjoy the concert." "Live long" is a
definite imperative.
And we *know* that {yIn nI' yISIQ} is an appropriate translation for the
phrase "live long". {yI-} is an imperative verb prefix in Klingon, so
your argument, that one must be able to carry out a command, fails.
>: > 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.
Rubbish?! I'm curious -- how do *you* define the term "imperative" so
that it excludes the things you're calling "mere wishes"? I've *never*
heard anyone tell me "may you have a nice day." I don't see any reason
to assume that a "may you" has been clipped off. The sentence is quite
complete as it is, without needing any supposedly elided prologue.
If any clipping of this sort happens, *I* usually hear it as "Good day."
"Happy Birthday." "Bon voyage." "Sweet dreams." That sort of thing.
>Consider too the commonly heard send-off {batlh bIHeghjaj} "Die honorably!",
>which is grammatically a wish or exhortation in Klingon, not an imperative.
There's a new word in this discussion: exhortation. I wouldn't class
it with wishes. My dictionary defines it as a phrase intended to incite
or move someone to act, which sounds rather closer to a command to me.
>(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>)
English too provides exactly these tools. "Have a nice day" is an order.
"May you have a nice day" is not. "Live long and prosper" is an order.
Since Vulcans are presumed to have translated their customary greeting
from their language into English, I'm going to continue to assume that
the imperative phrasing -- which is mirrored in the Klingon rendition we
have -- is the appropriate one to use.
-- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh