[86241] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Questions with law'/puS
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Terrence Donnelly)
Sat Jul 11 10:36:47 2009
Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 07:33:48 -0700 (PDT)
From: Terrence Donnelly <terrence.donnelly@sbcglobal.net>
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
--- SuStel wrote:
>It's special. It can't be interpolated or
> expanded. It must remain
> fixed. Period. Done. Game, set, and match.
> rIntaH.
--- On Thu, 7/9/09, Doq <doq@embarqmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with SuStel on this one and
> add that I doubt you would find a
> lot of people who would agree on how to interpret an
> interrogative
> version of the {law'/puS} construction. Comparison grammar
> in Klingon
> is unrelated to any other Klingon grammar and is remarkably
> limited in
> its functionality.
Yep, MO told us how {law'/puS} was absolutely unique and inviolate - until we discovered you could use {-be'} with it, or substitute other contrastive pairs for {law'/puS}, or we found out that it can be used as the main clause in complex sentences or with preceding noun phrases, or just recently on this list discovered that you probably could use interrogative pronouns as one of the compared items.
I strongly suspect that MO played up the uniqueness of {law'/puS} in the beginning because it was so different from the rest of Klingon grammar and so alien to, at least, English speakers. After years of experience with it, it doesn't seem so strange anymore, or like something sealed in a black box and totally unadaptable.
I'm not saying you definitely can use {-'a'} on {law'/puS}, just that I see no fundamental objection to it. And, as I said before, unless or until MO rules against it, to me it remains a possibility.
-- ter'eS
