On 1/20/2022 8:20 AM, De'vID wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jan 2022 at 14:07, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:
Does it make sense to use {-jaj} with imperatives?
ghobe'.
Soj yItIvjaj may you enjoy the food!
{yI-} "A special set of prefixes is used for imperatives, that is, verbs giving commands. (TKD p.34)
{-jaj} "This suffix is used to express a desire or wish on the part of the speaker that something take place in the future." (TKD p. 175)
How can something be both a command and a wish? {Soj yItIv} "I command you to enjoy the food" {Soj DatIvjaj "I wish that you enjoy the food" *{Soj yItIvjaj} "I command I wish you to enjoy the food"? "I wish that I command that you enjoy the food"?
Although there's nothing grammatically wrong, something feels weird, but I can't understand what it is exactly that seems strange.
A sentence can be grammatically correct and also meaningless. What would a combination of {yI-} with {-jaj} mean?
I agree, imperative *-jaj* makes no sense. Furthermore, mayqel may be misunderstanding /May you enjoy the food/ as an imperative. It's not; it's a subjunctive. There's no reason to force Klingon into the imperative to match the English, because the English is not in the imperative mood. /May you enjoy the food/ is simply *Soj DatIvjaj.* In English, it's subjunctive; in Klingon, it's indicative, unless you want to call *-jaj* the optative mood. Since *-jaj* is used on independent clauses and seems to be incompatible with the imperative mood in Klingon, I think there's a good argument to make that *-jaj* does, indeed, create a new mood in Klingon. (There is a similar argument to be made that Klingon also has an interrogative mood.) -- SuStel http://trimboli.name