tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Feb 20 10:58:10 2000

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Re: ghargh ngaSwI'



In a message dated 2/19/2000 1:48:28 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email protected] writes:

<< mumeyvam vIQochbe'. Huvqu' Hoch. >>

Recently I have been struggling to translate a lot of your messages.  But I 
have discovered that there has been a lot of discussion about transitivity of 
words published in the dictionary originally as if they might be 
intransitive.  The examples you have been discussing are <<qIm>> and <<'Ij>>. 
 Someone has said that Mr. Okrand used them transitively in ST5.  I will have 
to re-watch that movie and listen carefully.

Here is my point:  Immediately I began wondering about other words that 
people writing on this list have been using only intransitively, 
<<Qoch/Qochbe'>> coming to mind first.  Now I see that the founder of KLI 
does use <<Qochbe'>> transitively.

mochwI' vIQochbe'.  muDuQ mIwvam.  *descriptive verbs* yaHlu'DI' chaq *be 
transitive*laH tlhIngan Hol Hoch wotmey.  And, we can make descriptive verbs 
transitive by adding the suffix <<-moH,>> qar'a'?

I have always had the feeling that, unlike English, Klingon verbs may be only 
a single syllable but convey the complete meaning of the verb action.  
English uses a lot of verbs plus prepositions, according to our English 
grammar teachers.  But, if the teachers realize that the preposition--I will 
call it an additional particle to a verb--is part of the verb, we all will 
not have to be so concerned with recasting English sentences in order to 
avoid "dangling prepositions."

Xardana


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