tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Dec 10 12:14:41 2001
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Re: The Year of the Horse
From: <[email protected]>
> > Not quite; you've reversed the subject and predicate. "This Terran
> > year" is
> > the subject and goes at the end of an equational sentence (i.e. one
> > using a
> > pronoun as a copula) and has to be tagged with {-'e'}:
>
> To me it works better with "this year" as the object. But then I don't
know
> anything about this copula stuff.
In this case, what you don't know can't hurt you. There's no reason to
assume that Klingon and English copulas work the same way. In fact, there's
evidence that they don't. Forget what you think you know about "to be"
sentences, and look at what they're really telling you.
In Klingon, you mark the final noun in the "to be" sentence with the
focus/topic suffix /-'e'/. Some people will claim that this is there purely
because it's a rule, but Okrand's explanation of "to be" actually suggests
that it's performing its standard topicalizer role. He translates /X 'oH
Y'e'/ as "As for Y, it is X." Y is the topic, and you're using another noun
to describe it. Yes, it's a rule which must be followed, but it also has a
purpose.
In trying to say "This is the Year of the Horse," the topic under
consideration is "this year," not "Year of the Horse."
A: What is this year?
B: It is the Year of the Horse.
The other way round, you get Jeopardy-like conversation:
A: What is the Year of the Horse?
B: It is this year.
In the first conversation, the topic is "this year." In the second, it is
"Year of the Horse." The second conversation doesn't seem too natural. If
"Year of the Horse" were really to be the topic, you'd expect B to answer
with something like, "It is the seventh year in the Chinese cycle of years .
. . ."
I'm not saying that it won't work the other way. I'm just saying that to me
this concept is more natural, according to the actual meaning of the Klingon
sentence, as
*horse* DIS 'oH tera' DISvam'e'.