[87086] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: The topic marker -'e'
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (ghunchu'wI')
Tue Nov 24 21:32:46 2009
In-Reply-To: <a1173fff0911241801t41b26553n3fe5ac32d8bc1c19@mail.gmail.com>
From: "ghunchu'wI'" <qunchuy@alcaco.net>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:31:42 -0500
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
On Nov 24, 2009, at 9:01 PM, Christopher Doty wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 17:52, David Trimboli <david@trimboli.name>
> wrote:
>> Klingon doesn't have a passive voice, ...
>
> I'll probably get in trouble for this, too, but I would say that
> Klingon does have a passive voice, functionally-speaking.
Often the suffix {-lu'} maps well to English passive voice. However,
sometimes it doesn't. For example, {tlhuHnISlu'} "one must breathe."
> Functionally, we think of passives as demoting an agent (so that it
> leaves the phrase entirely) and promoting a patient to subject. With
> -lu' in Klingon, we see just such a thing: the one doing the action
> goes away, and the patient is now the subject.
In a sentence with a verb bearing {-lu'}, the subject is indefinite.
The object, if one exists, does not change. I suspect that your
understanding of the situation is being misinformed by your trying to
apply terms from your linguistic training.
-- ghunchu'wI'
