tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jul 15 11:10:34 2000
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
RE: aspect suffixes on pronouns (was Re: yIH? vIghro'?)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Anderson [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2000 10:59 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: aspect suffixes on pronouns (was Re: yIH? vIghro'?)
>
>
> ja' pIl'o':
> >I've seen many incidences of using an aspect suffix to a pronoun when it
> >is used as a "to be" verb.
>
> The examples in TKD section 6.3 are few, but they consistently omit aspect
> suffixes when describing things like set membership, and consistently
> include them when describing location. The impression I get is that {be'
> SoH} is something akin to a simple state of being, and {pa'Daq SoHtaH}
> describes an ongoing but perhaps temporary condition.
When I noticed this, years ago, the sense that I got (and this is just a
personal suspicion based on why *I* would do it this way) was that in {be'
SoH}, there is no explanation for using the pronoun for anything but a verb.
It's not a noun-noun possessive because "the woman's you" or "the you of the
woman" is nonsensical as would be any pronoun in place of {SoH} and there is
no conjunction joining the noun and pronoun, so the pronoun's use as a verb
is the only explanation left. It is also a classic type of sentence.
{tlhIngan maH!} It is an easy interpretation to make, high on the list of
expected sentence forms.
The verbal function is defined by the introductory noun serving as the
pronoun's direct object. I'd call this a transitive use of the pronoun and
Okrand would wince because he doesn't like the word "transitive" used when
describing Klingon grammar. In {pa'Daq SoH}, the pronoun is being used
intransitively and there really isn't any obvious cue that the pronoun is
being used as a verb. On the most gut level translation, I'm immediately
driven to ask, "In the room, you WHAT? What are you doing in the room, or
what is being done to you in the room? Did I miss a word here?" Meanwhile,
adding the Type 7 suffix doesn't change the meaning much and it makes it
clear that the pronoun is being used as a verb. {pa'Daq jIHtaH.}
Add the justification that all you are really saying is that you are in a
state of being in the room. Thus, continuity is appropriate. If it was
inappropriate, then something would be happening and we'd be using that verb
instead of using the pronoun as a verb. Now, the suffix {-taH} gives us
another classic sentence form which can be high on our list of expected
sentence forms easily recognized.
> Further examples in
> the Appendix present a locational "to be" without aspect suffixes, as in
> {nuqDaq 'oH puchpa''e'?} For most bathrooms, their location is a solid
> attribute, and one would not generally feel the need to mention it as an
> ongoing process. :-)
Also, the explicit subject marked with {-'e'} once again makes it obvious
that the pronoun is being used as a verb and not as a noun. Notice that if
the subject were not marked, then the two nouns might make sense as a
noun-noun possessive form. While {puchpa'Daj} would be more common than {'oH
puchpa'}, the latter would not necessarily be wrong. Meanwhile, adding
{-'e'} to {puchpa'} again gives us a classic sentence structure that we can
easily recognize and place high on our list of sentence structures to expect
while we are being fed words.
I think of these three forms [noun pronoun], [locative pronoun-taH] and
[noun pronoun noun-'e'] as something approaching formal idioms. The form is
somewhat idiomatic in a way that is immediately recognizable to anyone who
knows Klingon, yet is somewhat obtuse to anyone who, for example, had read
and learned everything in a TKD that had the pages torn out describing these
specific sentence forms. I'm sure there is a better linguistic term for this
than "formal idiom". "Structural convention"? I'm talking about something
like the comparative structure, which is essentially an easily recognizable
sentence structure that does not directly relate to normal sentence
structure. The comparative is a more radical example of this, but I think
these three "to be" related sentence structures are built to be recognizable
so they can be interpreted easily even though viewed without the knowledge
of this convention of form, they look odd and invite all sorts of strange
interpretation.
> >I thought that <nIQwIj bIH yIHmey'e'.> meant, "The tribbles, they are my
> >breakfast."
> >jIyajHa'a'?
This is the sort of strange interpretation that you get if you look at the
words without recognizing the exceptional nature of this sentence form and
the more typical translation of it into English.
> Okrand might translate it "As for the tribbles, they are my breakfast."
Perhaps so, when he was first creating the language, though I suspect he
would now just translate it as "The tribbles are my breakfast."
> (Somebody remember that sentence for the discussion of plurals
> that I fully
> expect to occur at qep'a', okay?)
>
> -- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh
qep'a'Daq SoH'e' tu'lu' net tulbej. HochvaD mu'tlheghvetlh DaqawlaH.
charghwI' 'utlh