[87256] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Checking understanding of -be'
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Trimboli)
Fri Nov 27 19:57:30 2009
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:53:55 -0500
From: David Trimboli <david@trimboli.name>
In-reply-to: <a1173fff0911271524s34a21b93xcc8755beefc5fd6d@mail.gmail.com>
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Christopher Doty wrote:
>>> If we were talking about something that wasn't seen by anyone (see,
>>> maybe, something "unseeable" like <qa'>), one might instead say:
>>>
>>> leghlu'be'
>>> "It isn't seen/one doesn't see it (maybe loosely even 'it is invisible')"
>>>
>>> Is this "correct" use of <-be'>?
>> We have a couple of examples of {-be'lu'} and {-lu'be'} (I'm sure Voragh
>> can provide them), but I don't think we have any real evidence to
>> conclude that one talks about failure to do something and another talks
>> about inability to do something. With what we know now, I'd be inclined
>> to accept {-be'lu'} and {-lu'be'} as meaning the same thing, while I
>> tend to use {-be'lu'} barring any further discoveries.
>
> I guess I didn't really mean anything about ability here (especially
> since <-lu'> and <-laH> can't occur on the same verb), so my English
> translation is bad. Perhaps more to my point would have been
> something like.
>
> wIleghlu'be'
> "No one sees us (not anyone at all)"
>
> As opposed to
>
> wIleghbe'lu'
> "Someone doesn't see us (but maybe others do)"
There is no indication anywhere that {-lu'be'} means "not anyone at all"
or "no one." There is a word for "no one": {pagh}. So far as anyone has
been able to tell, that I can remember, {-be'lu'} and {-lu'be'} are
interchangeable. This is why I called it exceptional.
A survey of all uses of {-be'lu'} and {-lu'be'} would be useful. This
has been done in the past, but I don't remember when, or if it turned up
anything interesting.
--
SuStel
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