tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Mar 26 12:38:39 1999
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RE: RE: KLBC: an ancient battle
- From: "Andeen, Eric" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: RE: KLBC: an ancient battle
- Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1999 13:41:10 -0700
jIjatlh:
> <meQ> is one of those funny verbs that works both ways: both <meQ qach> -
> "the building is burning" and <to'waQ meQ vutwI'> - "the cook burns the
> tendon" are legal. So you don't need the <-moH> here.
jatlh Lorenzo:
> You mean that meQ could be transitive OR intransitive.
> I thought that tlhInghan Hol hasn't such verbs and
> the -moH should be used:
> poS lojmIt
> lojmIt vIpoSmoH
> please can you explain.
For the most part, Klingon verbs are quite well behaved, and cannot have
both transitive and intransitive meaning for the same thing. Your example of
<poS lojmIt> and <lojmIt vIpoSmoH> is absolutely correct, and could not be
written any other way.
<meQ>, however, is an exception. There may be a few others, possibly
including <choH> (we're not sure about that one), but there are certainly
not very many. You can generally assume that a verb will behave one way or
the other. Often the hard part is figuring out *which* way.
pagh
Beginners' Grammarian
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