tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 30 11:15:47 2007

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



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

Re: Basic grammar question

Steven Boozer ([email protected])



Qes wrote:
>ghItlhpu' ghunchu'wI', ja':
> >I agree that the rule of {rom} ("accord", not "concord", if I
> >recall correctly) 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. [... ] 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.
>
> >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 [...]

It proves nothing WRT Klingon, of course, but I have seen this in other 
languages with fully conjugated verbs.  The other day I read in the local 
Spanish press something like *hablamos los mexicanos* "we Mexicans 
say".  (I've also seen similar utterances with the pronoun added:  e.g. 
*nosotros hablamos los mexicanos" and *hablamos nosotros los 
mexicanos*.)  Would Klingon speakers accept ?{majatlh tlhInganpu'} as "we 
Klingons speak" or would they require the pronoun in explicit apposition 
?{majatlh maH tlhInganpu'}?

>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"?

This is a good point:  the disconnect between the prefix {ma-} and the 
suffix on the subject {-wIj} even though they are both first person 
forms.  Would ?{maleng qorDu'maj} or even ?{maleng qorDu'} be allowed?




--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons






Back to archive top level