tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Apr 13 01:24:03 2002
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Re: "be'be'" - double negation
- From: "Rohan Fenwick" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: "be'be'" - double negation
- Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 05:22:38
"This kingdom thou shalt not take for thine own, wrongfully; for many others
have laboured here no less than thou." - John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, The
Ainulindale Silmarillion
jIjatlh:
>
> charghwI' suggested that there is always another way around such
sentences
> as this one - my example, <<muHoHbe'vIpbe'>>, "he is not afraid to not
kill
> me" (better: I am not afraid to leave you alive), could also be written
> <<muHoHbe' 'e' chenvIpmoHbe'>> "He will not kill me. He is not afraid to
do
> that." It's wordier, but it conforms to canon better.
jatlh Will:
>charghwI' feels like he's being paraphrased enough that he asked me to
>speak
>for him, since this discussion involves a lot more English text than he
>cares
>to wade through. charghwI' and I both feel like {-be'be'} is almost never a
>good idea and can be recast, but we don't really see a problem with
>{muHoHbe'vIpbe'}. It is efficient and expressive and not all that
>ambiguous.
vaj maQochbe'.
>Meanwhile, I see your alternative suggestion as a curious use of the verb
>{chen}, and {-be'} is pretty clearly misplaced in {chenvIpmoHbe'}, since
>I'd
>translate it as, "He is afraid to not cause that to form."
qatlho' 'ej jImuj. jIQaghpu'.
> BTW, I have also had a sentence containing <<not>> and the suffix
<<-be'>>
> vetoed; hence, the double negative <<-be'be'>>, one after the other,
> probably isn't a good idea.
>THAT is usually just a mistake. Likely, that's what I wrote about earlier.
>In
>some languages (and English slang dialects) the "double negative" in "I
>ain't
>never goin' there again," is an emphatic, rather than a logical reversal of
>one
>negative by the other. It has the opposite meaning of "I will never not go
>there again." So far as we know, Klingon always adhere's to the logical
>string
>of negatives reversing each other rather than emphasizing each other.
>That's
>really the nugget in the middle of this confused thread.
You are correct again. I believe you were the one to point out - correctly -
the mistake in my original <<not>> + <<-be'>> sentence, and upon rereading,
that IS what you wrote about.
jIlaDHa'qa'pu'. qatlho'qu' mughojmoHmo' yablIj.
Qapla' 'ej Satlho'
ro'Han
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