tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Aug 19 09:39:47 2002
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Re: poH nI'
In a message dated 8/16/2002 4:23:19 AM Mountain Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:
> SuStel:
> >>Actually, you have to say /qaStaHvIS poH nI' jIloStaH/.
> >
> >Not so fast. I noticed that {loS} is glossed "wait for" not just "wait",
> >which means it can take an object. The question is: Wait for what? A
> >person or a time period? Unfortunately, our two examples from canon do
> not
> >show an object:
> >
> >......
> >
> >Although I admit that this is not quite the same thing, but the original
> >poster may well have been right, though s/he should have used the object
> >prefix:
> >
> > poH nI' vIloStaH.
> > I was waiting for a long time.
>
SuStel is absolutely correctly for the idea you are trying to express. Let's
look at the final "wrong" example. "I continue waiting for a long time" has
the subject "I" the verb "waiting for" and the object "a long time." How can
poH nI' (a long time) be a noun and the object of the sentence? When will
this noun occur? Obviously that's not what we intended to say in the first
place; we wanted to express that we were waiting and the process took up a
long period of time. {loS} gets translated as a single verb meaning "waiting
for" even though many English teachers in America call "for" a preposition.
I prefer to think of "for" as part of the verb, an inseparable part.
peHruS