[2709] in tlhIngan-Hol
syntactic anomaly
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sat Jan 22 04:06:18 1994
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Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@klingon.East.Sun.COM>
From: dls9@aol.com
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@klingon.East.Sun.COM>
Date: Sat, 22 Jan 94 00:55:24 EST
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There is a sentence which has been haunting me for quite some time now.
Perhaps some of you have also come across it. It was in DavidBarron's postal
course:
{taH pagh taHbe' 'e' 'oH tlhobghach'e'}
At first sight of this atrocity, I was disgusted. I thought, HEY!! You can't
do that-- {'e'} can only be the object of a verb.
But the more I think about it, the more it bugs me. As twisted as this might
seem, I'm almost beginning to think that this sentence could be correct, or
at least considered acceptable Klingon.
The logic behind it is that it fits the syntax, although I still doubt one
could consider the NOUN in a NOUN-PRONOUN construction to be the object of
the pronominal verb. Traditional grammar, of course, labels it the subject.
But traditional grammar fails us in describing many other aspects of Klingon,
as well.
Because of all the edginess currenlty surrounding the issue of
Nominalization, I'll offer another example sentence:
{SaQan 'e' 'oH Qu'wIj'e'} = "My duty is to protect you."
Please, if I'm just going nuts again, slap me around a bit, because I think
that'd be good for me right now. Or else, someone could totally blow me away
in actually agreeing with me on just one grammatical point.... NAAHHHH!!!
Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos
