On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 9:23 AM SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
No, but I didn't say he can't say his sentence because Klingon pronouns can't be used without an antecedent. Indeed, I didn't say he can't say that sentence. He was pushing the boundary of what was acceptable, because he claimed his proposed pronoun *'oH* was referring to an antecedent *ngoDvam* that wasn't present in the sentence, but what he was doing was functionally equivalent to using *'e'* as a subject, which definitely *isn't* allowed.
If you have to say it this way, just state *ngoDvam* outright and you'll have a much stronger sentence.
I'm not sure Klingon is quite so strict. There are examples where an unspecified third-person subject is taken to be a previous sentence or previously-mentioned situation. For instance, there's the TKD phrase *Do'Ha'*, translated as "that is unfortunate" in the useful phrases list. With your stricter interpretation, it would probably have to be *Do'Ha' ghu'vetlh* or *Do'Ha' wanI'vetlh*. (I'm sure there are other examples, but it's not easy to search for them...)