[tlhIngan Hol] {'e' qa'} "instead of" with the {qa'} bearing suffixes

[Will Martin]

Keep in mind that there is no Klingon *Sentence As Subject* grammatical construction. We’ve argued about this for years, and it’s long established that sentences can be objects of other sentences, but not subjects of other sentences. 

There is only what has been given to us an idiomatic construction that appears to be *Sentence As Subject* using the one verb {qa’}. It apparently works like:

[simple sentence]; [simple sentence] ‘e’ qa’.

Okrand hasn’t tended to use semicolons before, so it should alert you to how special this is.

That idiom we were given didn’t have {-chugh} on any of the verbs. You keep trying to add it. It’s probably a bad idea to add any dependent clauses to any part of this idiom, unless we get a canon example or an explanation that clears the way.

Maybe this works, though I have my doubts, and nobody but Okrand can tell you, “Yes, this is how it works with {-chugh}.

We went through this with Comparative instructions. Okrand, in that case, did expand on how complex [X Q law’ Y Q puS] could get, but we would not have been justified in assuming that this would be the case until Okrand opened the way.

> On Nov 20, 2021, at 10:50 AM, luis.chaparro at web.de wrote:
> 
> Since I'm a beginner I lack the knowledge to answer this question, but I was thinking on the possibility of making a whole sentence the object of *qa'*:
> 
> *pu' DIlo'chugh, maQap. yan DIlo'chugh, maluj 'e' qa'* (*If we use phasers, we'll win. It replaces that if we use swords, we'll lose* or something like *Instead of losing if we use swords, we'll win if we use phasers)
> 
> I suppose it's completely wrong, but I would like to know why in order to improve my understanding of the language :-) Thank you!
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