tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jan 30 15:29:13 2000
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placement of conjunctions
jatlh Qov:
: Once we did not know how to "and" three items. Was it simply "A B C je"
: or did that fence curve in an unexpected direction?
Some had postulated - wrongly as we now know - *{A B je C je}.
QInteS:
} De'vam vIghajbe'. nuqDaq vISamlaH? HolQeDDaq 'oHtaH'a' De'vam'e'?
Qov:
: De'vetlh 'ang Skybox card. mI' vISovbe'. wej DIpmey rar Okrand. wa'
: /je/ lo'.
It was slipped into the copyright notice on the SkyBox cards, which Okrand
had also translated into Klingon:
TM, R c. je tera' DIS wa'-Hut-Hut-loS.
TM, R c. 1994 Paramount Pictures.
And, in case anyone missed it, he stated explicitly in KGT that WRT to the
conjunctions joining nouns (je, joq, ghap):
"In standard Klingon grammar, the conjunction follows the last noun
of the conjoined set; for example, {naQjej 'etlh taj je} ('spear,
sword, and knife' ...) or {tlhInganpu' romuluSnganpu' ghap} ('either
Klingons or Romulans') ..." (p.139)
Other patterns, such as {naQjej 'etlh je taj} or {tlhInganpu' ghap
romuluSnganpu'}, are called "common youthful errors" in KGT. Fairly
common, as it turns out; even Okrand (I mean, Vixis!) did it in ST5:
wa' tera'ngan je wa' romuluSngan.
A Terran and a Romulan.
But it's still an "error" according to prescriptive Klingon grammarians,
like using double negatives in English.
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons