tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jan 07 19:23:46 2001
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RE: Grammar Highlight Each Day (Voice)
ja'pu' peHruS:
> Today's highlight states that the Klingon language does not recognize voice.
> English has active voice and passive voice. Klingon only has verbs without
> distinguishing active voice or passive voice.
Mentioning terms such as "active voice" and "passive voice" without
explaining them seems rather inappropriate for a Grammar Highlight intended
for beginners. I fail to see the point in using terms which explicitly
don't apply to Klingon grammar anyway.
> There is a verb suffix, type 6 {-lu'} which is not passive voice!!!!!!
First of all, {-lu'} is a type *5* verb suffix.
Second, I believe that saying this with so many exclamation points is
completely unwarranted. Verbs with {-lu'} are often translated quite
easily -- and quite correctly -- using English passive voice. TKD even
says so, on page 39, with examples.
Of course, other Klingon grammatical structures can sometimes be translated
as passive voice, and {-lu'} can (and indeed in certain cases must) be
translated without using passive voice.
> Rather, it means that the subject of the sentence is not specified.
I've seen -- and made -- the usual comments about how this Highlight uses
terms which are not necessarily familiar to the supposed target audience of
beginners, and how it explains things in a way which could easily be
misunderstood.
However, this isn't just misleading or confusing. It's completely FALSE.
According to The Klingon Dictionary, the verb suffix {-lu'} indicates that
the subject of the sentence is unknown, indefinite, or general. There's a
real difference between "unknown" and "unspecified".
In the sentence {vIleghlu'}, the subject is not known. In the sentence
{mulegh}, the subject is merely not specified. In general terms, I think
that {-lu'} goes beyond "there is no explicit subject stated for this idea"
and makes it all the way to "there is no explicit subject for this idea".
* * *
Any "Grammar Highlight" involving the type 5 verb suffix {-lu'} is woefully
incomplete unless it mentions the way the verb prefixes are used
"backwards" with it. The normal prefixes having a third-person singular
object end up with their usual subject indicating instead the sentence's
object. For example:
{Dalegh} "you see it" - {Daleghlu'} "someone/something sees you"
{luchIl} "they misplace it" - {luchIllu'} "someone/something misplaces them"
{wIHIv} "we attack it" - {wIHIvlu'} "someone/something attacks us"
Despite the claims of this Grammar Highlight, it is perfectly valid to
render these examples as follows:
{Daleghlu'} "you are seen"
{luchIllu'} "they are misplaced"
{wIHIvlu'} "we are attacked"
-- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh