tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jun 14 08:55:38 2000
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Re: Raise your betleH to the stars.....
jatlh charghwI':
> > But can I use
> > Hovmey lurghDaq betleHlIj Dapep
> > for Raise your Batleth to (towards) the stars ????
[...]
> So, if we can't be sure {-Daq} works that way, what CAN we be sure of?
Well,
> we have the nouns {DoS} and {ray'} which are likely useful here. You want
us
> to raise our betleHmey. You want us to aim them. The stars are our
targets.
I only just recently started to follow this discussion, but let me throw in
my support for the use of /DoS/ or /ray'/ in this context. It doesn't
answer the original question, but does provide an alternative. (I'm not
absolutely entirely convinced that "locative" is a completely separate
concept from "object." With the HolQeD interview, we at least have some
evidence of locatives that are also objects. I'm not so certain that /-Daq/
cannot mean "in the direction of."
> You seem to be describing "aiming" and the stars are the "targets" of that
> aiming. In ST3, there was an order that Kruge gave to his gunner. "Target
> engines only!" That would have been a perfect example if Okrand had
actually
> written it that way instead of it being a fudged outtake of the line, "I
> wanted prisoners." Or was the outtake the other way around? I forget.
The line is /qama'pu' jonta' neH/. One of the most interesting sentences in
the history of the development of Klingon.
It originally meant "I said 'target engines only!'" /ma/ was "say," and
/-pu'/ was a past tense marker. /qa-/ was still the "I-you" verb prefix we
know and love today. /jonta'/ was only "engine," and /neH/ was only "only"
(sic).
Then they changed it to mean "I wanted prisoners!" /-pu'/ was doubled as a
plural marker for people, and /ma'/ was dropped from the vocabulary.
/qama'pu'/ changed from "I told you" to "prisoners." The word /jon/
"capture" was added, and the idea of tense in Klingon was dropped in favor
of aspect, to allow /-ta'/ "completed intentionally." The concept of
Clipped Klingon was also invented at this point to explain why the subtitle
wasn't "I wanted to capture prisoners." The Sentence As Object construction
was devised to explain the presence of two verbs, the second verb being the
newly-added /neH/ "want." The "no aspect on the second verb in an SAO" was
also created here to explain why it wasn't /jon neHta'/.
With this one sentence, the structure changed considerably. Much of the
natural feel of the language comes from the irregularities and special rules
created by this simple subtitle change.
> A locative is not a direct object. It is a locative. It is the place where
a
> thing happens.
A locative is a noun with the suffix /-Daq/ or /-vo'/ on it. As we learned
with the last Okrand interview in HolQeD, there are times when a locative
CAN be the object of the verb. One hopes that such locative objects can
only be used with specific nouns of motion, or else we have two different
locative functions: locatives indicating where the action takes place, and
locatives indicating where the action is heading for.
SuStel
Stardate 453.6