tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 04 02:14:20 2000
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Re: Deixis and direction
ja' SuStel:
>
> DaHjaj lopno'mo' vaS'a'Daq puqvaD betleH nob loD.
> Today at the Great Hall, because of the celebration, the man gives the child
> the bat'leth.
>
> /loD/ has the nominative case.
> /betleH/ has the accusative case. As I agree, these two are basically the
> same in Klingon. There is no inflection.
> /puqvaD/, /vaS'a'Daq/, /lopno'mo'/, and /DaHjaj/ all have exactly the same
> case. This case has no name, because Terran languages (the ones I know of,
> anyway) do not work this way.
I speak German, which has, in total, 16 cases, and at school I've had
Greek, which has 24, and Greek, which has 30.
1st case is Subjective, 2nd is Genitive, 3rd is Adjective, 4th is
Objective, 5th is Locative. All these exist in all three genders
(Masculin, Feminin, Neutral) and in both numbers (Single, Plural). Greek
doesn't have Locative, and uses Adjective for that instead.
In Klingon Subjectives and Objectives are formed by location in the
sentence. Genitive is formed by type 4 suffixes, Adjective is formed by
type 5 suffixes - and here you can see that Klingon grammar is similar
to Greek, because -Daq, an obvious Locative, is a type 5 suffix.
> /loD/ = NOMINATIVE.
> /betleH/ = ACCUSATIVE. Since there is no inflection, I don't know if these
> are worth two cases or not.
I would say /loD/ is Subjective and /betleH/ is Objective - a rose by a
different name ...
> /tlhIngan/ = GENITIVE
> /puqvaD/ = OTHER
> /romuluS/ = GENITIVE
> /vaS'a'Daq/ = OTHER
> /DaHjaj/ = OTHER.
I'm inclined to disagree with the usage of Genitive here. The Genitive
is the second case in German, Latin, Greek - even in Suomi which is
totally unrelated to Germanic and Romanic languages. The Genitive is
used to indicate possession. /betleHwIj/ is a Genitive.
--
Albert Arendsen --- aka --- Reyn Eaglestorm
>>>>> The Gods have a sense of humour <<<<<
>>>>> So be sure you don't lose yours <<<<<
http://home.student.utwente.nl/a.a.arendsen