tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jun 12 16:20:33 2002

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: subjectless verbs (was: matlhHa'ghach)

ghItlh 'ISqu':
>ghItlh Andrew Strader (Mon, 10 Jun 2002):
>: lut naQ vIja'meH loQ *Qatlhpu'*
>naDev wot {SIS} luDalaw' wotmey {Qatlhpu'} {ngeD} je. wotmeyvam tlha' pagh 
>DIp. vangwI' 'oSbogh DIp'e' luHutlh mu'tlhegmey vIqeltaHbogh.
>The highlighted verbs {Qatlhpu'} and {ngeD} lack explicit subjects, as is 
>often the case with {SIS}.

You better read your TKD. There's nothing special about verbs lacking an 
explicit subject in Klingon. It happens all the time. "Qong" is a complete 
sentence. You may wish to consider Qatlh in my above sentence as having an 
implicit Qu' or mIw as subject.

SIS is not attested in a sentence in canon, so we really don't know about it.

Sometimes you need -meH. Compare:

vIHoHmeH Qatlh (Qu').
vIHoH; Qatlh.

There *is* a slight difference.

Of course I'm against any formulaic extrapolations of this pattern with 
English. It can cause problems. For instance, someone once said to me, 
"ngeD qayajHa'meH Qu'," to which I promptly replied, "Qu'lIj 'oHbe' 'e' 
vItul." Maybe they should have used mIw, I dunno. Point is: don't just 
extrapolate -- think in Klingon.

>Qatlh De' vISuqta'meH Qu'.

About this kind of sentence I'd just like to say that this is another good 
candidate for disambiguation with -'e', as it is often done for relative 
clauses. Thus:

Qatlh De' vISuqta'meH Qu''e'.
It was the task which was difficult -- the task in order to have retrieved 
the info, that is.

But it's all up to you. Good attempts all around, 'ISqu'.

-- 
Andrew Strader

Back to archive top level