[tlhIngan Hol] «jIH je» and variations
MorphemeAddict
lytlesw at gmail.com
Fri Nov 25 05:30:12 PST 2022
How about using «'ej» with the jIH-form of the previous verb?
«juH qach vIghaj» (“I have a house.”)
«'ej vIghaj» (“Me too”)
or
«vIraS vIjaH vIneH» (“I want to go to France.”)
«'ej vIneH» (“Me too”)
lay'tel SIvten
On Sat, Nov 19, 2022 at 11:23 PM zrajm via tlhIngan-Hol <
tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org> wrote:
> Me, E.T., Thiago and pay'qagh discussed the phase «jIH je» on in the car
> here at the qepHom'a' in Saarbücken the other day (we were on our way to
> the party on Friday). – One of them said this topic has been discussed at
> some earlier meeting (a qep'a'?). I tried to search old tlhingan-hol
> postings, but I couldn't find anything on the subject.
>
> I've heard lots of people use the phrase «jIH je» to mean “Me too” – as
> in, for example, in an exchange like:
>
> «juH qach vIghaj» (“I have a house.”)
> «jIH je» (“Me too”)
>
> or
>
> «vIraS vIjaH vIneH» (“I want to go to France.”)
> «jIH je» (“Me too”)
>
> But I started to wonder what's going on in these phrases. I figure «jIH
> je» are abbreviations of the longer phrases «juH qach vIghaj je (jIH)» and
> «vIraS vIjaH vIneH je (jIH)». And, maybe, since the pronoun «jIH» is the
> only thing verb-like in the sentence, it acts a verb in the shortened
> phase, and the «je» therefore comes after it. (Though, with that
> interpretation, «jIH je» sounds more like “I am too” to my ears – but I
> remember taking about this with someone [HoD Qanqor? Seqram? Qov?] at a
> qep'a' at some point and getting pushback. – So clearly other people think
> differently.)
>
> But, what if «jIH» isn't a verb at all in that sentence? (Is there a verb
> requirement in Klingon sentences? If a lone adverb can act as a sentence
> [given adequate context] then maybe a noun [or a pronoun functioning as a
> noun] can too?) If that's so, wouldn't it mean that the sentences «juH
> qach vIghaj je jIH» and «vIraS vIjaH vIneH je jIH» should rather be
> abbreviated as «je jIH» (retaining the word order of the longer sentence)?
>
> Or maybe the response could even abbreviated to just «je»? – Though I
> figure the pronoun is quite likely to be used for emphasis since that is
> new information the responder is wishing to convey.
>
> So, what do you think? Is «je jIH» better than «jIH je»? And what are you
> arguments for your belief? – Or should the phrase be avoided altogether and
> expressed some other way? How?
>
> /maHvatlh
>
> P.S. «je» is classified as a conjunction in TKD (even when used after a
> verb to mean «too») so it's not a given (at least to me) that it is
> grammatical to use on its own.
>
> This is different from how TKD talks about the, syntactically similar,
> «neH» “only” (which can also come after both nouns and verbs) in that «neH»
> is explicitly called an adverbial. (I take this to mean that «neH» on its
> own it a perfectly fine sentence – though the number of contexts in which
> it would make sense might be limited.)
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