tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 15 14:34:17 1999

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: mu'meywIj tetlh



I wonder if the noun {wanI'} can help us handle the lack of time 
related relative pronoun. Consider:

pawmeH paq wanI' vISov.

Two interpretations:

In order that the book arrives, I know the event.

I know the in-order-that-the-book-arrives event.

We can't tell whether the {-meH} clause is modifying the noun 
{wanI'} or the verb {Sov} here, and frankly, it doesn't make 
much difference.

So if you "know" an event, what could you possibly know? It 
would be different from {paw paq 'e' vISov} "I know that the 
book arrives." What you know is an event. An event is a time 
related thing. Compare {wanI'} and {ghu'} and you see that the 
main difference between them is that {wanI'} relates to the time 
that a situation occurs and {ghu'} relates to the substance of 
the situation with no time reference.

Perhaps this runs deeper than we are prepared to intuitively go 
with an English language background. So, perhaps knowing an 
event is knowing its time.

We have a weakness in terms of dealing with questions relating 
to time, anyway. I mean, there is no official way to ask, "What 
time is it?"

Or perhaps a better verb would be {juv} "measure". If you 
measure an event, what would you be measuring?

I now know when the book will arrive tomorrow.

DaH wa'leS paq pawmeH wanI' vIjuvlaH.

I know it probably hurts most brains to try to wrap them around 
that casting, but give it a try and offer some feedback.

charghwI' 'utlh

On Thu, 14 Jan 1999 13:04:24 -0800 (PST) [email protected] 
wrote:

> In a message dated 1/14/1999 1:25:19 AM US Mountain Standard Time,
> [email protected] writes:
> 
> << Unfortunately,
>  the correct translation is unknown to us at present because the original
>  English sentence is an example of a relative adverb, which we just don't
>  know how 
>  to say yet.  In the sentence "I know _when_ the book is coming", we have
>  never yet
>  found a way to express that 'when'.  It is _not_ the same as the word
>  /ghorgh/,
>  which means only 'when?' as a question.  We have the same problem with
>  words like
>  'where' and 'how' (as in "I know how you did it").  You can get around
>  the problem
>  by re-casting (eg. /vay' Data'. mIwlIj vISov/), but we don't know any
>  Klingon
>  equivalents to the relative adverb at this time.
>    >>
> 
> jIQochbe', ter'eS
> DaH cha' mu'tlheghmey vIlo'qang
> 
> paq chu' DIHevba' 'ach poH vISovbe'
> 
> <poHDaj> or <poHvetlh> may/may not work just as well.
> 
> peHruS



Back to archive top level