[tlhIngan Hol] -lu'wI' (was: Rendered fat)

[Anthony Appleyard]

Sorry; by the impersonal / indefinite "r" I did not mean the Welsh for "the" (y, yr, 'r) For more information see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_conjugation
----Original message----
>From : qeslagh at hotmail.com
Date : 18/02/2017 - 13:09 (GMTST)
To : tlhingan-hol at kli.org
Subject : Re: [tlhIngan Hol] -lu'wI' (was: Rendered fat)
....
Also, I think you're a little confused on the Celtic "indefinite subject", which doesn't relate to the Klingon construction at all. The indefinite subject in Celtic is entirely different, and is rather a means of marking nominal definiteness on the verb. It
 doesn't restrict the ability of a verb to *take* a syntactic subject (compare Welsh /mae ci mawr yn yr ardd/ "a big dog is in the garden", but /mae'r ci mawr yn yr ardd/ "the big dog is in the garden" - both would be equally rendered as {Du'HomDaq 'oHtaH Ha'DIbaH
 tIn'e'} in Klingon).
taH:
> This looks like that wIleghlu' is partly describable as a passive, making
> leghlu'wI' possible for "one who is seen".
You've still got a logical leap to address between "partly describable as a passive" and "exactly describable as a passive". Yes, the {-lu'} construction in Klingon shares with the English passive a reduction in focus on the subject. But plenty of other constructions
 are capable of reducing focus on the subject. The two don't behave the same syntactically and so you can't reduce {-lu'} to a true passive.
I agree completely with SuStel. As they've been described to us in canon up to now, I don't believe {-lu'} and {-wI'} combine in a way that makes any grammatical sense.
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