[tlhIngan Hol] {net jalchugh} and the various "then"

[SuStel]

On 4/30/2019 3:22 PM, Will Martin wrote:
> This is new territory, and perhaps someone else has more detail from 
> any canon description of how {jal} gives Klingon the irrealis — the 
> ability to talk about something that hasn’t happened and is likely 
> never going to happen — can speak with more authority than I can. We 
> used the language for a couple decades without this, and to be honest, 
> I don’t see your average Klingon using this construction very many 
> times in his life.

It's fairly simple. the *net jalchugh* clause sets up a condition, and 
the rest of the sentence is the irrealis contingent on that condition. 
The irrealis is not indicated morphologically in Klingon. *jImIp net 
jalchugh, puH Duj chu' vIje'*/If I were rich, I would buy a new car./ 
The Klingon sentence literally means /if one imagine that I am rich, I 
buy a new car./ The irrealis comes strictly from the idea that someone 
is just envisioning something. The Klingon irrealis of this kind is in 
the indicative mood. There is no grammatical subjunctive mood in Klingon.


> Without clarification from Okrand, just working from my experience 
> with the language, {vaj} logically puts me in the world being 
> imagined, but {ghIq} doesn’t give me that logical link back into the 
> imagined world. It’s just a time stamp for the next clause.

I don't see *vaj* as necessarily implying something hypothetical. 
*HIchwIj vIpeppu'. vaj muHIvpu' jagh.*/I raised my pistol. So the enemy 
attacked me./


> Even with {vaj}, I wince a little, because it tempts me toward 
> stringing together two Sentence As Object constructions, which is 
> never a good thing. {jImIp net jalchugh vaj vIghro’ tIQ vIje’ net 
> jalnIS, je.}

Okrand has decreed that *net jalchugh* is how Klingons form this kind of 
irrealis, so your sentence is not required. *jImIp net jalchugh vIghro' 
tIQ vIje'*//is all you need to express the concept of what I /would/ do. 
This is one of those Okrand-said-it-so-it's-true things.


> In any case, I really think that you would better describe your 
> fantasy of being rich and buying an ancient cat with {mIp’a’wIj 
> vIjalDI’ reH vIghro’ tIQ vIje’ta’bogh vIjal je.} "When I imagine my 
> great wealth, I always also imagine the ancient cat I bought.”

Except this is not how Okrand describes the irrealis construction 
required. He doesn't say it can't have its variations, but you're going 
out of your way to move mayqel's conforming use to a non-conforming one.


> It doesn’t even require an irrealis, since you imagine the wealth and 
> you imagine the cat. These are real imaginings. The forthrightness and 
> clarity feel natural for the language.

That's not what irrealis means. The hypothetical part of the sentence is 
the buying of the ancient cat, not the existence of the cat or the 
wealth. The existence of these other things is not commented upon in the 
sentence.


> What you want is an irrealis equivalent of the way time stamps work in 
> Klingon. “Tomorrow, I go visit my cousin. We go shopping. We buy 
> coffee. We sit and chat. I go home.” All that happens “tomorrow”.
>
> You want to say, “I imagine that I am wealthy”, and you want that 
> context of an imagined Universe that has a wealthy you in it to be the 
> context that holds for a later statement. I’m not sure that Klingon 
> can do that.

That is exactly what *net jalchugh* does. *jImIp net jalchugh, lorwI' 
vISuch, 'aH wIje', qa'vIn wIje', maba' 'ej majaw, ghIq juH 
vIchegh.//*/If I were wealthy, I would visit my cousin, we would buy 
stuff, we would buy coffee, we would sit and chat, and then I would go 
home./ All of that only happens in my fantasy of "if I were rich."


-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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