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

Jeffrey Clark jmclark85 at gmail.com
Tue Apr 30 12:39:19 PDT 2019


My gloss of {vaj} was that it was a logic statement meant to signify a conclusion, rather than a sequential ordering statement. Which makes sense given the proliferation of other, more appropriate, words for communicating the order of events and their causal relationship.

Hegh molor. Suvchuq qeylIS molor je. qeylIS HoS law’ molo HoS puS. vaj molor HoH qeylIS ‘e’ vItobpu’.

—jevreH

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 30, 2019, at 15:22, Will Martin <willmartin2 at mac.com> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.} That is ugly. It’s the construction I think is called for here, but it messes up the whole sentence boundary issue of SAO, with a SAOOSAO (Sentence As Object Of Sentence As Object). Bleah!
> 
> In English, {vaj} and {ghIq} are both translated as “then”, but one is the logical “if/then”, while the other is just “X happens, then Y happens”. American Sign Language replaces this version of “then" with “Finished”, which describes it pretty well. There’s a boundary between two actions. That boundary is the completion of the first action. So, first someone imagines that you are rich, and then you buy an ancient cat. One happens, then the other happens. The first thing is imagined, and the completion of that act of imagining precedes the real world act of you buying the ancient cat.
> 
> 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.”
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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. It might be able to do it with {vaj}, but it probably doesn’t do it with either of your other two choices, unless Okrand says so, in which case, I’m just a clueless whiner who imagines that he knows how to speak Klingon.
> 
> charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan
> 
> rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>>> On Apr 30, 2019, at 1:00 PM, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> charghwI':
>>> One imagines I’m rich, thus I buy the ancient cat
>>> One imagines that I’m rich — at the time
>>> that one imagines that I’m rich, I’m going to buy the ancient cat
>>> Ditto for “subsequently”. One imagines I’m rich and after they
>>> have imagined that I’m rich, here in the real world, I buy the ancient cat,
>>> even though I’m not rich.
>> 
>> There is something with your analysis, which contradicts my
>> understanding of the {... net jalchugh, vaj ...} construction.
>> 
>> The way I understood it prior to this thread, was that the {vaj}
>> refers not to the act of imagining (i.e. not to the net jalchugh), but
>> to the "what" I imagined (i.e. the sentence that precedes the net
>> jalchugh).
>> 
>> The way I understand the {jImIp net jalchugh, vaj vIghro' tIQ vIje'},
>> is not "I would buy the ancient cat if one imagined I were rich", but
>> "I would buy the ancient cat if I were rich". The prerequisite for me
>> buying the ancient cat, isn't that someone needs to have first
>> imagined it; it's the fact that I need to be rich.
>> 
>> If my understanding is correct, then I can't understand how at the
>> sentence {jImIp net jalchugh, ghIq vIghro' tIQ vIje'}, you write that
>> "One imagines I’m rich and after they have imagined that I’m rich,
>> here in the real world, I buy the ancient cat, even though I’m not
>> rich".
>> 
>> According to your analysis, the {ghIq} acts to the {net jalchugh};
>> however, according to my understanding, the {ghIq} and of course the
>> {vaj} act not on the {net jalchugh} but to the sentence that precedes
>> it.
>> 
>> I'm not saying that I'm right. I'm writing this to demonstrate my
>> confusion on the matter..
>> 
>> And if someone could clarify this, it would be great.
>> 
>> ~ m. qunen'oS
>> Dun *ainur*pu', 'ej Dunqu' melkor
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> 
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