tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jul 15 15:03:52 1999

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Re: "yIDuv wa'"

Another old message I wanted to give you my opinions about:

jatlh SuStel:


>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.
>


I agree with SuStel on this. This seems to be very similar to direct
address.
For example, I know that qor, qoloth and qeng are waiting outside the door.
I only want qor to come in. then I say:
yIDuv, qor!
Now, if I'm not as specific as this, and I just want any - but only one - of
the three to come in, I say:
yIDuv, wa' neH!
The constructions are parallel, the first one is just more specific.


HovqIj

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