tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Oct 26 19:11:57 2009
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Ditransitive reflexives
- From: Terrence Donnelly <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Ditransitive reflexives
- Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:07:37 -0700 (PDT)
- Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=sbcglobal.net; h=Message-ID:X-YMail-OSG:Received:X-Mailer:Date:From:Subject:To:In-Reply-To:MIME-Version:Content-Type; b=S8RmGBAYYt+quzn02E+wF9Lc12vZlLG55XJ6vbo8+Mqbkh84MPjo6sMRgPxHiKfqAXDqraFS0veb+a2rsH11SPAs8b98sEFjsF0NurkEghpw6MxE3vRDT4yT6jqLZcqMs4152FMroq5ZKFB1cuPqhf52gVGBnfGTFPm4gvwQPOc=;
- In-reply-to: <[email protected]>
--- On Mon, 10/26/09, Tracy Canfield <[email protected]> wrote:
> My original post discusses *why* the
> prefix trick seems to be a problem in
> these cases. With examples. So I really am more
> than a little frustrated
> to have two people immediately tell me to use it, without
> addressing the
> original question.
You have found a lacuna in Klingon grammar. As far as I know, there is no easy way to express a reciprocal relationship between the subjects and beneficiaries of a verb phrase. You were posing the possibility of treating such a relationship as if it were a reciprocal subject-object relationship by using the "prefix trick" in some way, but the fact is that the verb in a (-chuq) phrase has no object, as shown by the use of the "no-object" verb prefixes. We say, for example, "We hit each other", using a "dummy" object to express the mutual action, but Klingons say {mamupchuq}, or something like "We reciprocally and mutually hit". As Doq noted, don't be influenced by the "each other" in the English, since the Klingon phrase is object-less, and thus the prefix trick is irrelevant.
-- ter'eS
![[KLI Member]](/pics/KLImemberbutton.gif "[KLI Member]"){kind=small}