tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Oct 06 07:10:14 2007

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Re: Grammar question: valid suffixes for {ben}

MorphemeAddict ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol taghwI']



In a message dated 10/6/2007 7:25:09 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email protected] writes:

> >     wa'maH benHey jo' chenmoHlu'.
> >     Apparently ten years ago the machinery is built.
> 
I would interpret this {-Hey} as modifying "years", not "ten", as it seems to 
do in English.  


> I've seen no instructions, on the subject but it's a noun doing a 
> noun's job, so it can carry suffixes. So that's valid. As the 
> modifier is on the timestamp, the best translation would ensure that 
> the uncertainty applies to that timestamp. I would interpret 
> "Apparently ten years ago the machinery was built," as meaning 
> <wa'maH ben jo' chenmoHlu'law'>. Perhaps "Indications are that the 
> machinery is ten years old," or "The machinery was built what seems 
> like ten years ago."
> 
> >or, say, when spoken by some time traveller:
> >
> >     vagh SanID benvo' jIjaH.
> >     I came from five thousand yeras ago.
> 
> Our experience isn't that Klingons use metaphors of place with times, 
> so the -vo' on a timestamp comes out looking weird. But you've 
> specified time travel, which could tun a time into a more of a place, 
> Who knows what the Klingon equivalent of Dr. Streetmentioner 
> (attributed author of a fictitious guide to English verb tenses for 
> time travellers) would come up with.to help Klingon time travellers 
> communicate their paradoxes.
> 

I would go even farther, saying that since {-vo'} can be used only with 
physical places, so its use on a time noun is automatically disallowed 
semantically, although still grammatical syntactically.  

> I'd be happy with you saying <vagh benHom> if you've established 
> we're talking about a planet with shorter years,
> 
lay'tel SIvten
taghtaHwI'   </HTML>






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