[tlhIngan Hol] placing {-lu'} on {'oH} and {ghaH}

[kechpaja at kechpaja.com]

On Fri, Jul 05, 2019 at 03:24:44PM -0400, SuStel wrote:
>On 7/5/2019 1:14 PM, De'vID wrote:
>> On Fri, 5 Jul 2019 at 17:15, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun at gmail.com
>> <mailto:mihkoun at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     There's something, which feels strange seeing/reading the
>>     {ghaHlu'}, but I can't find what it actually is.
>>
>>
>> I think this is impossible, because {-lu'} works with the pronominal
>> prefixes, and pronouns never take prefixes.
>
>Prefixes aren't inherent to the job that *-lu'* plays. Using *-lu'*
>simply makes you use /different/ prefixes.
>
>The sentence *Daqawlu'taH*/you will be remembered/ is simply a
>pronoun-elided version of *SoH Daqawlu'taH.* The prefix doesn't make the
>indefinite subject work; it simply agrees in a different way than
>sentences with subjects. All the *-lu'* really means is "no subject here."
>
>I can't see any problem with using *-lu'* with the third-person
>pronouns. First- and second-person pronoun "to be" sentences use the
>pronoun itself as the subject; third-person "to be" sentences can take
>third-person nouns as their subjects. *verengan ghaHlu'chugh,
>qurlu'ba'*/If one is a Ferengi, one is obviously greedy./ This is just
>the no-subject equivalent to *verengan ghaHchugh vay''e', qurba' vay'vetlh.*
>
This sounds like the kind of thing you'd ask a Klingon native speaker 
about (or, more realistically, that you'd try to elicit from that native 
speaker) in order to determine whether the pronouns-used-as-verbs were 
actually *verbs* morphologically, or just pronouns that could take 
certain verb suffixes in the absence of an actual verb. If {ghaHlu'} is 
possible with a meaning similar to {ghaH vay''e'}, that would be 
evidence for them being more verb-like, whereas if it weren't it would 
imply that they were closer to just pronouns with verb suffixes crammed 
on. 

 - SapIr