tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat May 05 07:27:18 2001
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RE: tuQaHlaH'a' ?
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ...Paul [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Friday, May 04, 2001 5:22 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: tuQaHlaH'a' ?
...
> > More complex as in something like "You told me about the three
> pillars of
> > honor"? In such a case, the /'e'/ wouldn't be necessary:
> >
> > batlh wej 'ay'mey DaDel jIHvaD bIjatlhtaHvIS.
While eliminating unnecessary words, why not go a step further:
jIHvaD wej 'ay'mey DaDel.
I would assume that if you are describing, likely you are speaking. Maybe
you were writing, instead and explicitly wanted to make sure I knew you were
making sounds with your mouth and not text with your hands, but otherwise
the {jatlh} stuff seems superfluous.
> I'm thinking more like "Yesterday spoke to me about killing the targ.":
>
> wa'Hu' targh vIHoH 'e' DaDel bIjatlhvIS
Just to offer another alternative casting:
wa'Hu' maja'chuq. targh HoHlu' 'e' Daqel.
Basically, I tried to stay closer to the vague features of your English
translation. In "Yesterday [you] spoke to me about killing the targ," you
don't mention whether the killing has actually occured or not, nor do you
identify who might kill it. I took care of the "Yesterday you spoke to me,"
assuming that it was actually a discussion. Making it {ja'chuq} also
discourages the assumption that we are dealing with any sort of direct
quotation. "You" are the one talking about killing the targ, so {Daqel} is
appropriate. While we discussed things yesterday, you considered killing the
targ, though since the English doesn't indicate who kills the targ, {targh
HoHlu'} seemed appropriate.
> > It'd be convenient if we could say */quv wIja'chuq/ "We discuss
> honor," but
> > we can't. This is why I suggest /quv'e' maja'chuq/ "On the
> topic of honor,
> > know this: we confer."
> >
> > wa'Hu' batlh'e' maja'chuq.
>
> Aren't you still putting batlh'e' in the object position? I'd be more
> inclined to see ja'chuq as taking an object, the object being the topic of
> the discussion.
The prefix {ma-} says there is no object, except for the reflexive one
implied with {-chuq}. That's the rub. Meanwhile, you can put any noun at the
head of the sentence with {-'e'} on it without any real grammatical reason
to be in the sentence, except to announce the topic of the sentence. In this
case, {wa'Hu' batlh'e' maja'chuq} works for me because it basically means,
"As for honor, yesterday, we discussed." It does seem a little strange, but
it is as close to solving the problem of how to say "We discussed X" as I've
ever seen, short of splitting things out into two sentences:
maja'chuq. batlh wIqel.
You can pin them back together by making one a dependent clause.
Assuming that the discussion had honor as its core focus:
batlh wIqelmeH maja'chuq. The purpose of our discussion was to consider
honor.
batlh wIqel wIneHmo' maja'chuq. We discuss because we want to consider
honor.
If honor was merely a topic among many that were discussed:
maja'chuqtaHvIS batlh wIqel.
If honor was the openning topic of discussion that then went on to other
topics:
maja'chuqchoHDI' batlh wIqel.
If discussion wandered a lot, but repeatedly kept returning to honor:
maja'chuqtaHvIS batlh wIqelqa'.
Klingon offers such a beautiful degree of efficient specificity
> ...Paul (who, oddly enough, is better at grammar than vocabulary. :)
charghwI' 'utlh