tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jul 02 10:57:12 1999

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Re: "yIDuv wa'"

jatlh Qanqor:


>Regarding:  yIDuv wa'
>
>Jeremy, what's going on here is that you have (inadvertantly, I assume), 
>stumbled onto the forefront of grammar.  I understand (now) what you are
>doing and why, and frankly, it's probably correct.  But it *is* onthe
>frontier.  It's very unusual, nobody has really done this before.  I
>understand why charghwI' is uncomfortable with it.  But this kind of thing
>is beyond the normal scope of Beginner's Grammarian, so feel free to stand
>your ground on it.  Like I said, your construction is probably correct, and
>in any case is not provably *incorrect*.  BUT:  it IS unusual and
>certainly controversial, which means  you still might want to rework it,
>just to be clearer, because people are frankly going to have a hard time
>understanding it.  Since what you seem to be trying to get across is that
>only one person should advance, regardless of how many people are at the
>door, I might do it as:  yIDuv wa' neH.
>
>In any case, you have assuredly stirred up a grammatical hornet's nest.
{{:-)
>This one will certainly be argued about. {{:-)


I certainly have seen it before, a number of times.  There's technically no
place in The Klingon Dictionary which states that an imperative verb has a
subject of any kind.  They have objects, and they have entities to which
commands are given.  I would be careful in trying to create subjects for
imperative verbs.

That said, however, I also have no problem with Krankor's sentence.  It
works.  But, let me add a bit of punctuation to show why *I* think it works:

yIDuv!  wa' neH!
Advance!  Just one!

The second sentence is not a complete sentence, but that's not too bad.
Consider Commander Kruge's line, {DoS jonta' neH} which is translated, I
believe, "Target engine only."  What it really means is "Target: engine
only."

I wouldn't use a subject on an imperative verb myself, but I think in
virtually all cases you can do something like this, or use direct address,
to do virtually the same thing.  The sentence uttered will be the same.

SuStel
Stardate 99500.8

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