tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jan 15 11:45:13 2002

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Re: Hech (was: Re: SajwIj)

ghItlh Sean Healy:

SuStel has addressed the meaning of {Hech}, but I want to comment on the grammar:

> > >But I thought that {'e'} acted as an object so that "SENTENCE 'e' VERB"
> > >was
> > >analagous to "OBJECT VERB".  Or is {Hech} an exception that can only take
> > >
> > >{'e'} or {net} as its object, which Okrand brought to light after TKD?
> > > (Or
> > >maybe it's in TKD and I missed it?)
> >
[...]
> TKD, p. 65:
> "Klingon has two special pronouns, {'e'} and {net}, which refer to the 
> previous sentence as a whole...They are always treated as the object of the 
> verb, and the verb always takes a prefix indicating a third-person singular 
> object."
> 
> So it seems to me that {'e'} and {net} are always treated exactly as though 
> they were a third-person singular object.  

{'e'} the pronoun isn't just treated as if it were
a 3rd person singular object, it _is_ a 3rd person
singular object, referring back to a unitary
grammatical structure, the previous sentence.

>So it _is_ about {'e'}.  I should 
> be able to swap {'e'} and {<paw>} (or perhaps {mu' <paw>}).

{'e'} is the mechanism MO has created to allow us to 
make a verbal phrase the object of another verb.  The
only verb that doesn't need the {'e'} is {neH}, where
a verb can be its object by itself: {jISop vIneH}. This
is just the way it is, one of the rules MO made for the
language.

It's true that any transitive verb can in theory take a
common noun object, but, except for {neH}, none of
them can take a verbal phrase object without using 
{'e} to tie them together.  So, no, {'e'} and {paw}
aren't interchangeable.

SENTENCE 'e' VERB is not analogous to
OBJECT VERB.  Actually the 'e' VERB part _is_ the entire
OBJECT VERB complex.  The pronoun {'e'} refers back
to the previous SENTENCE, which is basically completely
independent: {qagh vISop 'e' vIHech} is literally
"I eat qagh. This I intend/mean to do".  We punctuate
 the two phrases as one sentence, but that is not unheard of in Klingon: reported speech sentences using {jatlh} are also technically two separate sentences, althought punctuated as one.

-- ter'eS

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