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