tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jul 28 05:07:05 2006
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Re: pronouns
- From: "QeS 'utlh" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: pronouns
- Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 22:06:34 +1000
- Bcc:
ghItlhpu' Shane MiQogh, ja':
>Maybe i was wrong when i keep thinking of pronouns as forms of "to be." On
>recent documentation of japanese a new concept came into my head. "to be"
>in english has 2 meanings, "equals" and "exist."
That's right. The "equals" meaning is what Klingon does with the
pronoun-as-verb. The "exist" meaning, if you'll pardon the pun, doesn't
exist in Klingon; you have to recast, usually with {tu'lu'} or {lutu'lu'}.
>Equals is considered a "copula" which, in japanese, is considered to be
>seperate
>from a verb.
You would be surprised how many languages do this. In Turkish, copularity is
usually represented by adding a special series of pronominal endings to
nouns. In Ubykh, it's done with a noun suffix. In Hebrew (I believe; Voragh
would be able to confirm or correct this) the copula is most usually given
simply by apposition, and in Russian, in normal speech the copula is not
used in the present tense.
>Despite it's conjugated in almost every language that conjugates verbs and
>has
>"the copula". Theoretically, one could say this is marc okrand making
>Klingon
>even more unique by having a cupola that "conjugates" per subject that it
>is
>used with.
While I can't think of a language that uses a pronoun-as-copular-construct
in the same way as Klingon does (although Russian might come close), I also
can't think of a single natural language that has a regular copula. {{:)
QeS 'utlh
tlhIngan Hol yejHaD pabpo' / Grammarian of the Klingon Language Institute
not nItoj Hemey ngo' juppu' ngo' je
(Old roads and old friends will never deceive you)
- Ubykh Hol vIttlhegh
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