tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Mar 15 18:49:02 2004

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Re: multiple verb suffixes

Scott Willis ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2004 9:20 PM
Subject: multiple verb suffixes


> now i know that {vIchennISmoH} is grammatically ambiguous, since it means
> both "i need to create it" (apparently the more common interpretation by
far) and
> "i cause it to need to take form".

I think the ambiguity comes from the way "need to" is used in English, and
the way {-nIS} is used in Klingon. Where "need to" appears in an English
sentence affects the meaning of the sentence, specifically which agent (the
subject or the object) does the "needing". OTOH, {-nIS} appears in only one
place on the verb in Klingon: After any type 1's and before any type 3's. So
we don't have the linguistic freedom in Klingon that we do in English where
this idea is concerned.

> is it true that all cases of multiple verbal suffixes (excluding rovers)
have
> this sort of ambiguity, where the meanings compounded by different
orderings
> of the suffix meanings are all represented by the same fixed string of
> suffixes?
> eg. does {muqIpqa'pu'} mean both "he (had/has/will have) hit me again" and
> "he (had/has/will have) resumed hitting me"?

Er, yes, but I would accept these two sentences as equivalent. And I would
read {muqIpqa'pu'} as "She/He has resumed hitting me."

--ngabwI'
Beginners' Grammarian,
Klingon Language Institute
http://kli.org/
HovpoH 701292.6

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