[tlhIngan Hol] A thought on the irrealis construction

[André Müller]

I agree this might happen in more progressive dialects or future varieties
of Klingon. Hypothetically speaking, of course. Someday we might have forms
like {jIQongneHbe'} - and I agree that it would perhaps be slot #2.
In some natural languages it happened the same way: In Burmese the former
verb <khyang> 'to wish, to desire' has become a grammatical verb suffix
/-ʨʰin/ (pronounced [ʨʰɪ̃]) which just means 'want' and is sometimes just
called "desiderative marker".
Maybe also the suffix {-nIS} used to be a verb with the meaning 'must' in
the past? We have no evidence for that. I wonder if some has already
written a HolQeD article in the olden days.

Of course this is all in-universe speculation about the language history of
Klingon. But I find it very interesting too.

- André

2016-11-08 12:55 GMT+01:00 kechpaja <kechpaja at comcast.net>:

> On Mon, Nov 07, 2016 at 10:31:08AM +0100, De'vID wrote:
> > On 7 November 2016 at 10:21, Lieven <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:
> > > Actually, I'm pretty happy to be able to say now {latlh loD SoH net
> > > jalchugh, vaj qaHoH.}, but I would have preferred it be done with a
> > > different kind of suffix. But Okrand told us this weekend, that
> according to
> > > Maltz, we should have received nearly all of the existing suffixes -
> but
> > > there may be more, perhabs.
> >
> > It would be very weird, at this point, to get any more (let's say,
> > "modern {ta' Hol}") suffixes, considering the volume of canon we have.
> > What are the chances that a commonplace suffix would fail to appear in
> > important Klingon works such as {paq'batlh} and {Hamlet}?
>
> I was under the impression that {Hamlet} wasn't actually canon — am I
> wrong about that?
>
> At this point, we've seen a number of suffixes that can also be used as
> independant verbs, which suggests that the boundary between what's a
> suffix and what's a verb might be a bit blurrier in Klingon than in
> English. More concretely, I've been wondering if the verb {neH} might be
> on its way to being grammaticalized (especially since it's already in a
> special category as the only verb that can take a SAO without {'e'}).
> Maybe in some progressive dialects it's already there (I'd expect it to
> be type 2, but that isn't necessarily a given).
>
> pItlh
>
> -SapIr
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