tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Oct 06 07:10:14 2007
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Grammar question: valid suffixes for {ben}
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: Grammar question: valid suffixes for {ben}
- Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 09:58:39 EDT
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>