tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed May 26 13:35:16 2004
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Re: core semantic case roles: agent, patient, focus
ghItlh "...Paul" <[email protected]>:
> I'm thinking, the example of /Doq/ -- it doesn't make sense to say
> /yIDoq/, but it does make sense to say /yIDoq'eghmoH/. Would it make any
> sense to say /yIDoqchoH/ ("Start being red!")? Would this translation
> really be any different than /yIQongchoH/ ("Start sleeping!")
{yIDoq} makes perfect sense to me. In fact "be red!" seems much simpler than
"Cause yourself to be red!". To me the {-'eghmoH} is just redundent. Of course
they are going to do it to themselves, your using {yI-}.
> If the issue really boils down in the end to how the imperative prefixes
> work (with or without various verb suffixes), perhaps it's because the
> imperative prefix has a connotation of /-choH/, although it's not
> explicit. Turn it around -- does it really make sense to say /yIQong/?
> Or does one really mean /yIQongchoH/, and we can attribute this to
> "clipped Klingon"?
I don't agree. {yI-} means {yI-} it doesn't mean {yI-verb-choH}. Yes, {yIQong}
and {yIQongchoH} may have the same outcome but they don't mean exactly the same
thing.
The issue may be that English has a hard time dealing with the differences
between {yIQong} and {yIQongchoH}, just as it has issues dealing with a word
like {DochHom}. This is a down fall of English, not Klingon.
To me, when someone says "make sense" it often seems to mean "make sense in
English". There are words in Klingon that follow the grammatical rules of the
language but make no sense what so ever when you translate them into English.
For example {Daghar} is a legal Klingon word, it's a verb with a prefix, but
people will argue that I can't put {Da-} on {ghar}. Why? Because it doesn't
make sense in English (and I would argue that it makes sense in Klingon too).
Well I hope that made sense. :)
qurgh
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