tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Sep 19 17:21:30 2007

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Re: Positioning for emphasis

Alan Anderson ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

ja' QeS 'utlh:

> Okay, I'll argue on a different tack: in the English sentence "I  
> hit myself", I am simultaneously the semantic subject and object of  
> the sentence. I'm the only one involved. But the *grammatical*  
> subject is "I", and the grammatical object is "myself".

I reject the validity of this argument on two counts.  First, the  
details of English grammar are not particularly relevant to a  
discussion of Klingon grammar.  My second objection is with the way  
you're apparently considering different *forms* of the first person  
pronoun to be different *things*, but that's not important in this  
forum, and I will not muddy the waters here with it.

It seems to me that we're coming at this from two fundamentally  
different directions.  My take on {N1'e' N2 V} is that it does not  
give even the slightest hint that the first noun is intended to fill  
the role of the sentence's subject.  Since my primary goal is to use  
Klingon as a medium for communication, I consider such a construction  
defective if that is indeed the speaker's intent.  The other view is  
that {puq'e' yaS qIp} and "as for the child, he hit the officer" are  
equivalent.  I can understand the arguments in favor of that  
interpretation.  However, I can only follow them so far before I am  
brought up short by the fundamental OVS nature of Klingon grammar.   
My best efforts at trying to convince myself of the merits of that  
side of the debate end up depending on too-literal equivalences  
between the English and the customary Klingon translation.

I will present one final point and then let the issue go.  There is a  
well-established and unambiguously correct way to translate the  
English phrase into Klingon:  {yaS qIp puq'e'}

-- ghunchu'wI'

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