[tlhIngan Hol] Sentence as object using {'oH}

[nIqolay Q]

On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 8:00 AM, mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:

> Is {chabHommeylIj Sopta' vIghro'wIj 'e' 'oH vIt'e'} correct ?
>

Okrand has never used or commented on using {'e'} with a copula pronoun
(i.e. a pronoun used verbally to mean "to be"), so we don't know if {'e'
'oH} constructions are acceptable or not. If they are, though, your
sentence is probably grammatically acceptable, though a little redundant.
There is the question of whether {vIghro'mey} and other animals are
actually capable of intention and can therefore use the {-ta'} suffix,
though that's more of a philosophical question than a syntactic one.

(Although, since {'e'} is a pronoun, maybe it can be used as a copula
too... perhaps {chabHommeylIj Sopta' vIghro'wIj 'e' vIt'e'}? Actually, no,
that's too crazy even for me.)

On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 10:23 AM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:

> The proposed version with *‘e’ *might be technically correct, but I have
> a hard time believing Klingons use verb-acting pronouns in
> sentence-as-object constructions. The final verb in an SAO should generally
> be something simple and unexceptional.
>

This sounds more like a subjective stylistic choice rather than a
grammatical rule. I agree that in most cases there's probably shorter or
clearer ways to phrase a given sentence than {'e' 'oH}, but I wouldn't rule
it out entirely just because most Klingons wouldn't phrase it like that.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/attachments/20170822/191d9588/attachment-0017.htm>