tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 25 19:42:14 2009

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Re: The topic marker -'e'

Christopher Doty ([email protected]) 

> (Communications officer is {QumpIn}.)

Thanks, couldn't find it readily...

> That says "The communications officer ignored, for Commander Kruge, an
> urgent message." It's as if Kruge ordered the officer to ignore all
> urgent messages, not as if the officer took it upon himself to ignore
> any urgent messages specifically for Kruge.

But why does it say this?  I haven't seen anything anywhere which
indicates that this interpretation is the only one possible.  That is,
I don't understand why you're saying that this interpretation is
correct, and the other isn't.

You might note that "The communications officer ignored an urgent
message for Commander Kruge" is actually ambiguous in English: it
could me that the messages was for Kruge and it was ignored, or that
an urgent message was ignored at the behest of Kruge.  I don't know
why you're saying that this ambiguity isn't present in Klingon.

> Qugh la'vaD QIn pav lI'lu'pu'bogh buSHa'pu' QumpIn
> The communications officer ignored a message which was transmitted to
> Commander Kruge.
>
> Here, {Qugh la'vaD} is tied to {lI'lu'pu'bogh}, not {QIn pav}, and not
> {buSHa'pu'}. There are other verbs I could have used than {lI'}, but the
> point is that it takes a bit of recasting to get the Klingon to mean
> what we want it to mean.

But again, I haven't seen anything that says this.  Why is {Qugh
la'vaD} tied to {lI'lu'pu'bogh} in this sentence, and why does that
make it correct?

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