[tlhIngan Hol] unable to use the upper case letter to specify by not specifying

[Will Martin]

The suffix {-‘e’} is odd in that it can either give you the topic of a sentence, or it can mark something as a focus word.

In other words like other Type 5 noun suffixes, you can put it on a word at the beginning of a sentence and that word isn’t the subject or object of the main verb. It’s the topic. Like the locative gives you a spacial context for the sentence, {-‘e’} as topicalizer can give you a topic context for the sentence.

SuvwI’’e’ SoH yoH law’ Hoch yoH puS.

I’m sure I’m not quoting that correctly, but the idea is that the noun {SuvwI’} has its function in the sentence defined by the suffix. It provides the context for the sentence. "We’re talking about warriors. You are the bravest.”

You can also take a noun that already has a grammatical function and add {-‘e’} to it wherever it normally would appear in the sentence. It can still be a subject or object of any clause as revealed by its position, and you can mark it with {-‘e’}. The classic case is to use it to disambiguate a relative clause with both a subject and object by marking the head noun with {-‘e’}. {puq’e’ qIppu’bogh yaS vISov.} "I know the child who was hit by the officer."

You are trying to use {-‘e’} as if it meant the same things as {-‘a’}, somehow increasing the significance of the noun in all contexts outside of the sentence, like {SuvwI’’a’ SoH.} Here, the {-‘a’} has nothing to do with grammatical function in the sentence. A {SuvwI’’a’} is a different kind of {SuvwI’} which is more significant than a normal {SuvwI’}.

Meanwhile, we’ve never been given reason to believe that a pronoun can take {-‘a’}.

In your sentence, we can’t even be sure whether {ghaH’e’} is to topic of the entire sentence, or the direct object of {quvmoHmeH loD} because if it’s the latter, we don’t really have a reason for marking it with {-‘e’}. You are just emphasizing that the man honors HIM, and only HIM. There’s nothing all that special about “him” except that within the context of this specific sentence, the action is exclusively done to him. It doesn’t mark {ghaH} as different from any other {ghaH}, except that in the action of this specific sentence, this guy doesn’t honor anyone other than him.

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.




> On Aug 11, 2020, at 12:41 PM, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> charghwI'
> > I’m not sure that everyone would interpret
> > your Klingon statement as you intend.
> 
> But I can't see any other way it could be understood.
> 
> Could you specify further on how it could be understood any different ?
> 
> ~ Qa'yIn
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> tlhIngan-Hol at lists.kli.org
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