tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 30 03:44:24 2007

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

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

Re: Basic grammar question

QeS 'utlh ([email protected]) 

ghItlhpu' ghunchu'wI', ja': 
>I agree that the rule of {rom} ("accord", not "concord", if I
>recall correctly)
 
HIja', bIlugh. DopDaq qul yIchenmoH QobDI' ghu'.
 
>strongly discourages something like {maleng qorDu'wIj}.
>But I'm not quite prepared to dismiss it without further
>consideration.  The more I think about it, the more it seems
>to mesh with my internalized Klingon grammar.
 
Accepted. All I wanted to say was that I, for my part, think it's ungrammatical based on what canon we have. That's my conclusion, and I certainly don't want to represent that it's The Way.
 
>It seems similar to "we students" (or "we band of brothers") in
>English.  Formally, it could perhaps be seen as apposition, with
>the actual pronoun elided but understood from the verb prefix.
 
Perhaps this is a reason why I find the usage odd; opinions differ as to what extent apposition is possible in Klingon. Some posters have used the sentence ?{Hoch Savan} "I salute you all" as their introduction, and I've always disliked that too (it reads as though it should at least have a comma: {Hoch, Savan} "everyone, I salute you"). S2 only demonstrates apposition of nouns; I would accept apposition with free pronouns (so {malengpu' maH tlhInganpu'} "we Klingons have journeyed"), but apposition with pronominal prefixes is a bit of a stretch, IMHO.
 
Also, if {maleng qorDu'wIj} is to be seen of an apposition of {qorDu'wIj} with a first person pronoun implied by the prefix {ma-}, wouldn't it be more natural for the implied pronoun to be the plural {maH} (since {ma-} is plural), leading to the preferential reading of "*we* and my family travelled"?
 
>For many situations with a first-person subject, the subject
>pronoun is given only for explicit emphasis anyway.
 
Again, absolutely true. I just think that the pronominal prefixes aren't really pronominal enough on their own to get away with standing as true pronouns when there's already a full noun standing in the relevant position in the sentence, unless the full noun is seen as in some way a separate utterance, and not really part of the sentence (perhaps also to be so punctuated: {maleng, qorDu'wIj} "we journeyed, my family"), in which case {maleng} is grammatically almost completely separate from {qorDu'wIj} anyway and the point becomes moot. vuDwIj 'oH neH.
 
QeS 'utlhtlhIngan Hol yejHaD pab po'wI' / Grammarian of the Klingon Language Institutenot nItoj Hemey ngo' juppu' ngo' je(Old roads and old friends will never deceive you)- Ubykh Hol vIttlhegh
_________________________________________________________________
Your Future Starts Here. Dream it? Then be it! Find it at www.seek.com.au
http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F%3Ftracking%3Dsk%3Ahet%3Ask%3Anine%3A0%3Ahot%3Atext&_tv4565661&_r=OCT07_endtext_Future&_m=EXT

Back to archive top level