Also, I appreciate the insight into the use of {-‘e’} on the last noun in {X ‘oH Y’e’} sentences. {tlhIngan ghaH Qanqor’e’} does get it’s “Krankor is a Klingon” translation through the mechanism of “Krankor is the topic of the sentence, 'He is a Klingon.’” Translation compresses the latter into the former. We are talking about Krankor when we say, “He is a Klingon."
Well, yes, but I wouldn't call this insight on my part: it's
explained fairly explicitly in TKD when the topic (ahem) is
introduced.
puqpu' chaH qama'pu''e' The prisoners are children.
pa'DajDaq ghaHtaH la''e' The commander is in his quarters.These sentences might also be translated As for the prisoners, they are children; As for the commander, he is in his quarters.
Okrand was trying to work out the mechanics of a language with no verb for “to be”, and came up with two mechanics. One is to imply “to be” in all the adjectival or stative verbs.
I wouldn't look at it this way. In English it is required to use
be to assign an adjective to a subject as the main thrust
of a sentence; Klingon does away with this middleman and just
makes all qualities equal to other verbs. You "do" Quch
just as much as you "do" qet. To mentally insert a be
every time you see a verb of quality is to think in English or
some similar language. When I see Quch tlhIngan, I think A
Klingon Quches.
The other is to use pronouns as both subject and verb, like {tlhIngan ghaH.} Meanwhile, in “Krankor is a Klingon,” you have this additional noun. What do you do with THAT?
I consider the idea that the pronoun "acts" as the verb to be a
simplification of what's really going on, to explain the grammar
to an English speaker who can't conceive of a complete sentence
without a verb (i.e., the intended audience of the book). In
Klingon, a copula links either a noun with a pronoun or two nouns.
Saying tlhIngan ghaH is to say tlhIngan = ghaH:
you're explicitly setting the antecedent for your pronoun. You can
use verb suffixes on the pronoun because you're allowed to modify
that equals sign to better reflect the identity: is the identity
continuous? negative? relative? interrogative?
So, he made the subject noun the Topic of the sentence, and instead of placing this extra noun more like other {-‘e’} marked topics at the beginning of the sentence, which would have made it {Qanqor’e’ tlhIngan ghaH},
Except for qIbDaq SuvwI''e' SoH Dun law' Hoch Dun puS and "fronted" sentences like HaqwI''e' DaH yISam, he has never done this. The former is a comparative or superlative and may not operate on the rules of basic sentences. The latter specifically explains that the marked noun is the object, so it's not a case of a free-floating topic noun (and Okrand has said fronting this way is marked and wouldn't be done regularly). So except for special cases, he has never used a free-floating topic noun. I have serious doubts whether they're used by Klingons.
Note that {Qanqor’e’ tlhIngan ghaH,} doesn’t break any rules and would effectively have the same meaning as {tlhIngan ghaH Qanqor’e’.} Likely, it’s a valid expression, though through habit and convention, Klingons always order the words {tlhIngan ghaH Qanqor’e’.} Using the unconventional word order wouldn’t be technically wrong, but at the least it would be “highly marked” suggesting that you don’t speak the language very well.
Correct. Qanqor'e' tlhIngan ghaH may not break any rules, but it's obviously not the right way to say this. I could imagine this to be another case of fronting. A bit of punctuation would make the use-case clearer: Imagine a scene where Rich pulls off his rubber forehead and reveals that he's got a real Klingon forehead underneath. Everyone is stunned, and someone says Qanqor'e'! tlhIngan ghaH! Krankor! He's a Klingon! In any case, just because you can imagine a way it might be said doesn't mean it's now open season on the grammar.
I mean, there's nothing actually wrong with speaking like
Yoda, and everyone will understand you, but that doesn't mean you
want to emulate it for anything other than speaking like Yoda.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name