[tlhIngan Hol] {-be'} on {-lu'}.. seriously ?

[nIqolay Q]

On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 3:54 AM, mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:

> Recently, I saw in a sentence written by an expert the {-be'} used on
> {-lu'}.
>
> I won't say who wrote it, nor will I quote the exact sentence, since these
> details are of no importance.
>
> Suffice it to say, that it was on a transitive verb (not that if the verb
> was intransitive, it would make any difference).
>
> So, I was wondering how on earth, this sentence could be correct.
>
> If I wrote {Soplu'be'}, then what would this mean ? "not someone
> unspecified eats" ? And if I want to say "not someone unspecified eats",
> then why not just write {Sop (subject)} ?
>

​This would only work out if negating {-lu'} negated the "unspecified"
part, which is not the only possible interpretation of {-lu'be'}. There is
no official interpretation of this combination yet. But based on the way
people use it, it seems that they often interpet {-lu'be'} as, and intend
it to mean, something like "nobody (but in a vaguer, more unspecified sort
of way than 'pagh')". Usually, this ends up conveying the same basic idea
as {wotbe'lu'}: something doesn't happen and it's not important or known
who's not doing it.

I wouldn't say it's out-and-out wrong, because it's never been forbidden
explicitly, and I don't want to assume that some novel combination of
suffixes is ungrammatical simply because we don't know precisely what it
means. But it is still undefined.
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