[tlhIngan Hol] can I say {jaghpu' chaH chaH'e'} ?

[SuStel]

On 1/21/2020 11:45 AM, Lieven L. Litaer wrote:
> Am 21.01.2020 um 17:28 schrieb nIqolay Q:
>> I'm not sure it's quite so clearly defined as that. Copula pronouns can
>> take verbal suffixes, after all. And we know from the latest qepHom
>> (http://www.qephom.de/book/qepHom2019_p_21.jpg) that not all Klingons
>> analyze words into distinct parts of speech the same way.
>
> Be careful not to over-interpret this too much. It was only said that
> verbs and nouns can be the same word, based on TKD; Don't interpret it
> too much that words can mean anything now. Proniuns were NEVER treated
> as a verb, it's only the English translation that uses a verb (to be). 

Agreed. The text of the qepHom page goes out its way to avoid declaring 
whether identical nouns and verbs are, in fact, the same word, or 
whether they're homophonous, but different, words. The TKD Addendum 
describes "nouns and verbs being identical in form."

But nIqolay's point is not without merit: Klingon parts of speech may 
not be utterly rigid. Of course, there are formally only the three parts 
of speech: *DIp, wot, chuv,* and a lot of *chuvmey* act like, stand in 
for, or have properties of *DIpmey* or *wotmey* at times. But there are 
clearly limits. You could not, for instance, use a pronoun as an 
adverbial or an adverbial as a pronoun, despite the fact that they're 
both *chuvmey.* Since we lack vocabulary for the subtypes of *chuvmey, 
*one might think that Klingon linguists don't care to develop too 
detailed of a formal description of the structure of their language.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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