[87431] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Cogito ergo sum (was RE: Numbers with pronouns)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher Doty)
Wed Dec 2 15:22:05 2009
In-Reply-To: <f60fe000912021151r69a8c85av74e9b9fb48ce38a2@mail.gmail.com>
From: Christopher Doty <suomichris@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2009 12:19:11 -0800
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 11:51, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> True, but I think it would get tiresome to have -lu' on basically
> every verb in the soliloquy until the end when Hamlet finally refers
> to himself.
Well, it might be tiresome, but if the grammar calls for it...
Putting -ed on the end of a bunch of English verbs might be tiresome,
too, but if the stuff happened in the past...
> Third person works, though I agree it would be better
> with an antecedent established at the beginning (which there isn't
> since {taH pagh taHbe'} is the first line).
Well, the thing is, the non-finite form of the English doesn't *allow*
an antecedent. I imagine the following conversation:
A: "To be, or not to be, that--"
B: "Who are you talking about?"
A: "Er, what? I'm not talking about anyone; I'm talking about being
and not being..."
I'd like to pretend that <taH> and <taHbe'> are really nouns, and it's
some sort of clipped Klingon, but that doesn't work with the <-be'>...
Oh well, I guess I will just have to be sad about it.
>> So, yeah.. Maybe Okrand was just flustered or something, I dunno...
>
> Well, his original fluster-free translation had the same zero prefix
> on {yIn}, so I don't think that was it.
Yeah, I'm just trying to make excuses for him...
> You're not alone, but this is hardly the most questionable bit of
> canon out there. I'm not terribly fond of "The dish is always very
> good when someone serves cold revenge", myself...
Yeah, I know. Still... :((
