[237] in tlhIngan-Hol
rovers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun Mar 22 21:49:30 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: mosquito@Athena.MIT.EDU
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Sun, 22 Mar 92 20:52:16 -0500
Using grammatical features to induce emphasis is not unusual. In Spanish,
for instance, in certain circumstances, one can drop subject pronouns:
Tengo hambre. I'm hungry.
Yo tengo hambre. *I* am hungry.
This is similar to the description of Klingon:
yaS vIqIp. I hit the officer.
yaS vIqIp jIH. *I* hit the officer.
There's no problem with using qu' to replace the raising of intonation
for emphasis. The fact that stress can convey the same information
does not imply Klingon actually prefers stress to qu'. The fact that
vIqIpqu'moHqu'ba'qu'lI'qu' would be rare is that overuse of qu'
negates its purpose. Instead of singling out certain suffixes for
additional emphasis, it makes it unclear what you think is most
important.
-Ha' tends to mean "un-", that is, primarily, <verb>-Ha' means once,
<verb> happened, and now you are reversing the effect.
Secondary to this is the "dis-" meaning, that is, not implying <verb>
happened. "voqHa'" = "distrust" "parHa'" = "like", "yajHa'" = "misunderstand"
This meaning, if anything, seems to be more rare and might be idiosyncratic.
As an adjective-verb suffix, it has the primary meaning of not implying the
other state occured. This is yet another piece of evidence that in Klingon,
adjectives != verbs.
I'm not convinced a Klingon would say, "don't not kill me." "HIHoHqu'" would
convey the same information without the added wordiness.
It's a little more difficult to say the same about the following:
yaS yIQochbe'choH! Make the officer agree!
jIparHa'lu'Qo'. I refuse to be liked.
jIQuchQo' pagh jIQuchHa'Qo'. I refuse to be happy or unhappy.
I think the rules in the Klingon dictionary are intended to be "as the
Klingons saw it", which is bound to be limited in scope from time to time.
They might be analogs of our "never end a sentence with a preposition" rule,
which is broken in ordinary speech all the time. I think the point of the
"-be' cannot be used with an imperative" is to prefer "-Qo'" to "HI-...-be'"
and that "HIHoHbe'Qo'" conveys the correct information. Not that you would
say such a thing around your teacher, however, or he really WILL kill you.
I see no problem with having 2 or more rovers, though their overuse sounds
a little silly, like English "I know that you know that I know that you know
that,..."
\ /
--OO--
!!
