[129] in tlhIngan-Hol
re: random question
dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun Feb 16 19:16:44 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: krankor@IMA.ISC.COM (Captain Krankor)
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 92 17:48:33 -0500
Regarding: There can only be one!
Yes, you cannot use -lu' and -laH together. Okrand was quite insistant
about this. All he would say is you have to restructure the sentence.
So here's my quick stab at it:
wa' neH tu'lu' 'e' 'oH DuH'e' neH
I'm not sure if maybe the first neH is perhaps redundant. Let's try
it without: wa' tu'lu' 'e' 'oH DuH'e' neH
Yeah, I think I like that better. Not the fairly interesting case of
where to put the -'e' suffix. One almost wants to have DuH neH'e',
just as you would do with an adjectival verb, like HoD QaQ'e', but
in this case neH is an adverbial, not a verb. If you put the -'e'
on neH, in fact, you would be implying that it is a verb, and of
course we know that there *is* a verb neH-- hence, instead of saying
"the only possibility", you would be saying "the wanted possibility",
more or less. So, though it seems just slightly odd, the -'e' goes
on DuH.
Note also that the preceding indicates my stand on the question of
which verbs can act adjectivally. It seems clear that Klingons don't
distinguish verbs and adjectives, given the way that they use verbs
for both. The wording in the dict is that "any verb expressing a
state or quality" can be used as an adjective. But, if we drop our
English bias, if we try hard *not* to fall into the rut of interpreting
that as "any verb that's *really* an adjective in English", it
becomes clear that pretty much *any* verb can express a state or
quality, in this sense. For instance, the verb "to run" could
express the state of "running", hence "the running man" could be
loD qet. Yes, it could also be qetbogh loD, but that also applies
to the "real" adjectives: HoD QaQ, the good captain, could certainly
be done as QaQbogh HoD.
However, it remains true that the book does sort of, kind of seem to
imply, sometimes, that there is a distinction between the two kinds
of verbs, while other times it doesn't. So my take on it all is this:
Yes, you can use any verb as an adjective, or you can use a -bogh
construction, however the what-we-would-call-an-adjective-in-English
verbs are more likely to be used adjectively, whereas the what-we-
would-call-a-real-verb-in-English verbs are more likely to be used
with -bogh. But I don't think either construction in either case is
actually *wrong*.
Well, I seem to have strayed from the original topic, but then again
I'd been meaning to send out a posting on adjectives anyway, so this
killed another bird with the same stone. {{:-)
--from the Grammarian's Desk,
Captain Krankor
