tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Sep 15 07:29:23 2007

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Re: Positioning for emphasis

QeS 'utlh ([email protected]) 

ghItlhpu' Philip:
>It does let you front a topic, though, so I daresay one could replace
>{yaS qIp puq} "the child hit the officer" with {puq'e' yaS qIp} "As
>for the child, (it) hit the officer". I don't think you'd have to use
>a resumptive pronoun.

lay'tel SIvten:
>I don't think you even could use a resumptive pronoun (which I've never 
>heard
>used in connection with Klingon).  A pronoun in the position of a 
>resumptive
>pronoun would likely be considered a different entity from the one in the
>fronted topic.

How would you go about translating {puq'e' yaS qIp ghaH}, then? I can't make 
any sense of it unless {ghaH} and {puq'e'} refer to the same thing.

>But yes, topics can be used for emphasis.  {jIlugh'a'?}

bIlugh 'e' vIHar. Voragh cites the example {HaqwI'e'' DaH yISam} from TKD, 
which seems to be a perfect example of emphatic usage of the suffix {-'e'}.

ghItlhpu' Voragh, ja':
>As for Philip's example of "As for the child, (it) hit the officer", the 
>only way to grammatically translate this is {yaS qIp puq'e'}.  Although the 
>subject can be fronted in English, it can't in Klingon; it can only be 
>tagged with the topic suffix {-'e}:

We don't know that for certain. Every example you provide of in-situ topic 
marking of the subject is in a copular sentence, and we *do* already know 
that such sentences follow a very strict pattern. I don't think it's 
reasonable to cite the rigid rule governing the marking of the subject of a 
copular construction as evidence that topic-marked subjects must be 
immobile. I have no problem with either {yaS qIp puq'e'} or {puq'e' yaS qIp} 
for "it was the child who hit the officer".

ja'taH:
>According to our current knowledge of colloquial Klingon, ?{puq'e' yaS qIp} 
>would most likely be understood as "S/he hit the CHILD's officer, It was 
>the child's officer whom s/he hit" (i.e. not some other officer).

I'm in agreement with SuStel on this. Interpretation of {puq'e' yaS qIp} in 
this way is ungrammatical; the only possible interpretation of the sentence 
is "as for the child, he or she hit the officer", with {puq'e'} standing as 
a header, and {yaS qIp} being the basic OV(S) sentence.

ghItlhpu' SuStel, ja'.
>The only way you could emphasize {puq} in the noun phrase {puq yaS}
>"child's officer" is with intonation or the like.

Now while SuStel is technically correct here (in that it's impossible to 
retain a simple noun phrase with emphasis marked on {puq}), I think emphasis 
of {puq} is nevertheless easily translatable by giving {puq} its own header 
phrase and using a possessive suffix on the originally possessed noun: 
{puq'e' yaSDaj qIp}. This is ambiguous in a way that English normally isn't, 
but proper context should be perfectly sufficient to resolve any ambiguity. 
That's not to say that intonation isn't equally valid, only that intonation 
may not be the only answer.

QeS 'utlh
tlhIngan Hol yejHaD pab po'wI' / 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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