tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Oct 29 23:00:06 1999
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Re: Imperatives with aspect
"Patrick Masterson" <[email protected]>
>I was wondering what the meaning of imperative verbs with aspect suffixes
>would mean.
A couple of years ago, I believe during a game of Klingon Scrabble, the
word {yInenta'} came up. Several of us debated whether it made sense,
and even if it did, whether it was easily translatable into English.
SuStel had a truly wonderful interpretation of it: "Grow up, already!"
An imperative prefix with a continuous suffix means "Be in the process
of doing something." One of the very first Klingon words heard was the
command {juntaH}; a {yI-} prefix would be appropriate if it weren't in
a situation that called for Clipped Klingon.
I think an imperative with a perfective suffix means something like
"Act in such a way as to make the action have occurred." It's not often
literally possible to do this, but that doesn't prevent the grammar from
working.
-- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh