tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 30 06:03:12 2009
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Re: Double negatives
- From: Tracy Canfield <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Double negatives
- Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:01:39 -0500
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I don't think your sample sentences are incomplete, since not "never"
shows up without -be' in some sentences Okrand wrote:
'oy'naQ Dalo'be'chugh not nenghep lop puq (TKW)
If you don't use the painstik, the child will never celebrate his Age
of Ascension.
not toj tlhInganpu' (TKW)
Klingons never bluff.
not lay'Ha' tlhIngan (TKW)
No Klingon ever breaks his word. (The English translation moves the
negation to the determiner, but the Klingon source text just uses
"not".)
wej ("not yet") seems to show a similar behavior, where the idea of
negation is carried by the adjective but not the verb:
wej vIlegh (TKD)
I don't see him/her yet
I do wonder if the rule is "negation at only one point" or "negation
in several places, but not on the verb if there's negation elsewhere",
but that is a question for another place and time.
2009/11/30 <[email protected]>:
> Is there a canon stance regarding the use of double negatives in tlhIngan Hol? I haven't been able to find any references to this in TKD or elsewhere. (But if cursing is a fine art, then I can't imagine many tlhInganpu' would be adverse to the theatricality of adding as many as a sentence could bear.)
>
> For example:
>
> {not batlhHa' bIHeghbe'jaj} "May you never die dishonorably."
>
> {not bong jIjatlhbe'jaj} "May I never speak by accident."
>
> Does this usage of {not} render the {-be'-} redundant or is this suffix still necessary? {not batlhHa' bIHeghjaj} somehow sounds incomplete to me.
>
> nuq vuDmeyraj?
>
> ~toQ
>
>
>