[87316] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Double negatives
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher Doty)
Mon Nov 30 16:18:36 2009
In-Reply-To: <4B14315C.1030701@trimboli.name>
From: Christopher Doty <suomichris@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:16:14 -0800
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 12:55, David Trimboli <david@trimboli.name> wrote:
>
> Okrand always translates colloquially, not literally, unless he
> explicitly goes out of his way to tell you the literal translation. He
> explains this in the introduction to TKD.
>
> In this case, he has shown a tendency to translate "<imperative> or
> <alternative>" as {X-chugh Y}, where X and Y are clauses.
>
> bIDIlbe'chugh vaj bIHegh.
> Pay or die. (CK)
> "If you do not pay, then you die."
>
> bIje'be'chugh vaj bIHegh.
> Buy or die. (PK, TKW)
> "If you do not buy, then you die."
>
> Hoch DaSopbe'chugh batlh bIHeghbe'.
> Eat everything or you will die without honor. (PK)
> "If you do not eat everything, you do not die honorably."
Ah, that makes perfect sense. Not sure why I wasn't following the logic.
> That last one contains the {-be'} that negates more than just its
> preceding element that I mentioned before. We subsequently learned about
> putting {-Ha'} on adverbials, which would lead us to expect {batlhHa'
> bIHegh} "you die dishonorably," but that's not the proverb.
Well, <-be'> negating verb + object isn't that weird. One might say
that, when <-be'> immediately follows the verb root, it negates the
predicate (verb + object); elsewhere, it negates just what precedes
it. I'm tempted to ask for examples of <-be'>, but I reckon that's a
giant list, so I'll just look through the stuff I have.
Chris
