On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 10:47 AM De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:

TKD 6.7 (add) says that "the adverbial precedes the object-verb-noun

...

construction". In the above example, {'e'} is the object of the verb {Sov}, so I think it's correct. – Or did I forget something?

I somehow feel there is a canon example for this (x not 'e'), but I just can't remember.

{DuraS tuq tlhIngan yejquv patlh luDub 'e' reH lunIDtaH DuraS be'nI'pu' lurSa' be'etor je. ngoQvam luchavmeH ghawran maghpu' be'nI'pu'.} "The sisters of the House of Duras, Lursa and B'Etor, are constantly seeking a higher standing for the House of Duras within the Klingon High Council."

Note that {reH} directly precedes {lunaHtaH} here, and not {luDub}. "By the book", the {reH} should have preceded the {'e'}, but {'e'} is not a typical object.

The Klingon wiki makes the following claim: http://klingon.wiki/En/KlingonGrammarAddenda <6.2.5. Sentences as Objects... Adverbs with 'e' come after the object sentence and before the 'e', e.g. paw Duj wej 'e' vIlegh "I haven't seen the ship arrive yet". [HQ v1n2p11]> However, I'm unable to locate the reference. HolQeD 1:2 p.11 doesn't seem to have this sentence: http://klingonska.org/canon/1992-06-holqed-01-2.txt It's possible that the sentence is from HolQeD, but that there's a typo in the issue or page number. Unfortunately, HolQeD 1:2 and HolQeD 2:1 are two of the issues that I don't have in printed form, so I can't check. Can anyone else? -- De'vID

Ahh. The rare advantage of being ancient… I have HolQeD v1n2. There, From the Grammarian’s Desk (by Captain Krankor, it says [and I’m adding curly brackets around the Klingon text — he used bold font, and I omit so this won’t be rejected for being too long]: *** Greetings from the Empire… …This issue’s column will focus on the adverbials and the mystical, magical pronoun {‘e’}. Consider the following English sentence: “I never saw the captain hit the officer.” How would you render this in Klingon? The first attempt might well be this: {not yaS qIppu’ HoD ‘e’ vIlegh} However, this would be very liable to be interpreted as “I saw the captain never hit the officer: — not quite the same thing. It seems that we want to somehow get that {not} adverbial together with the {legh} verb. Yet we know that, for the most part, adverbials are supposed to go at the beginning of sentences, aren’t they? … The correct translation is: {yaS qIppu’ HoD not ‘e’ vIlegh} … In describing the {‘e’} sentence construction, the dictionary has this to say: “Klingon has two special pronouns, {‘e’} and {net}, which refer to the previous sentence as a whole. …They are always treated as the object of the verb. …What is a single sentence in English is often /two/ sentences in Klingon. … one can fall into the pit of starting to think of that little {‘e’} as a kind of conjunction, but remember, it is not: It is a pronoun, the object of the verb, and the sentences that use this construction are not sentences at all, they are /pairs/ of sentences. *** His other example in the article is {chay’ veSDuj’a’ vIghajlaH DaH ‘e’ boyajchoH}. “Now you are all beginning to understand how I am able to own a great warship." He also suggests that it’s okay (as we later learned from the script of a later movie) to use the {‘e’} to refer to something that was just said by a different person. **** Crewman: {vavwI’ ghaH ‘aj’e’} "The admiral is my father” Captain: {‘e’ vISovbe’} “I didn’t know that" **** I’m happy to transcribe or scan or whatever the entire HolQeD v1n2 if someone has the tech suggestion as to how to get around text length limits on the mailing list. pItlh charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)

On Apr 13, 2023, at 8:07 AM, Lieven L. Litaer via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org> wrote: ...That is indeed an interesting thing to research.

I don't have v1n2, but I checked v2n1 and v2n2: It does not have anything regarding the above topic.

Also, I doubt that the above phrase is a canon example, because we have a quite complete corpus of canon phrases today. The search at Klingonska (and also Google) does not give any response for that phrase.

It's difficult to search for that quickly. If it's a typo, it could be anything.

-- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.tlhInganHol.com http://klingon.wiki/En/HolQeD _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

Thanks to charghwI' for pointing at this. Now at last I know why I remembered this phrase, even though it's not canon. To all those who do not have HolQeD: The article is found in the book "From the Grammarian's Desk", which is a collection of the HQ articles by HoD Qanqor. Am 13.04.2023 um 15:14 schrieb De'vID via tlhIngan-Hol:

Was this Okrand's example?

I think it's not. All of the article seems to be from HoD Qanqor. He usually marks canon quotes clearly.

I believe he was asked about this (or a similar) sentence and said that {chay'} is only a question word, and doesn't act like a relative pronoun (meaning something like "the way in which...").

I remember something like that too. In my understanding, it's not used like "I know how it happened." (Same also for qatlh) -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.tlhInganHol.com http://klingon.wiki/En/HolQeD

[wrong button] Okay, yes, this is “From the Grammarian’s Desk” which was a regular feature of HolQeD and was later reprinted as a collection, so it is both in HolQeD v1n2p4-5 and also in the separate publication entitled “From the Grammarian’s Desk". Citations should probably cite the original source, which was HolQeD. It was not a canon example from Okrand, since this was June 1992 and we didn’t exactly have a lot of canon back then. I think that in Krankor’s example he fully intended {chay’} to be a question word. “How do I own a great ship? Now you are beginning to understand that.” He may have been stretching the grammar a bit to do this, since the {‘e’} is not really referring to the question so much as the ANSWER to the question. These were early days. I would not, now, present this as an example, and I’ll spare you how I would have translated it because you don’t care. I think his argument was good, and he could have picked a clearer, less controversial example. I still applaud him for the degree of insight that he had, before most of us had heard of the language. As iffy as this example may be, I don’t think Okrand improved things with his example that seems to have mistakenly put the adverb AFTER the {‘e’} instead of in front of it. There’s nothing in TKD that justifies THAT word order, but there it is. Canon. [Eye roll. Head slap. Head shake. Sigh.] I don’t think that Okrand has ever explicitly spoken on the placement of an adverbial affecting the second verb of an SAO construction. I like Krankor’s approach better than Okrand’s, and in my remarkably limited writing in Klingon, I’ll probably follow Krankor’s placement because it seems to follow the rules of grammar in a more sensible way, and I simply don’t understand Okrand’s canon example at all. I mean, we have several grammatical items that could appear before Direct Object. If {‘e’} precedes an adverbial, what about time stamps, Type 5 marked nouns, {-meH} clauses, etc.? If Okrand really wants the {-‘e’} to precede the adverbial, then he’s got some ’splainin’ to do so we know how to form the second sentence of SAO when it is more complex than just a verb and a subject. I really think the ball is in his court on this one. pItlh charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)

On Apr 13, 2023, at 11:01 AM, Lieven L. Litaer via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org> wrote:

Thanks to charghwI' for pointing at this. Now at last I know why I remembered this phrase, even though it's not canon.

To all those who do not have HolQeD: The article is found in the book "From the Grammarian's Desk", which is a collection of the HQ articles by HoD Qanqor.

Am 13.04.2023 um 15:14 schrieb De'vID via tlhIngan-Hol:

...

Was this Okrand's example?

I think it's not. All of the article seems to be from HoD Qanqor. He usually marks canon quotes clearly.

...

I believe he was asked about this (or a similar) sentence and said that {chay'} is only a question word, and doesn't act like a relative pronoun (meaning something like "the way in which...").

I remember something like that too. In my understanding, it's not used like "I know how it happened." (Same also for qatlh)

-- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.tlhInganHol.com http://klingon.wiki/En/HolQeD _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 8:07 AM Lieven L. Litaer via tlhIngan-Hol < tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org> wrote:

Just for the record: the claim comes from a collection of grammatical additions compiled by ter'eS.

...

http://klingon.wiki/En/KlingonGrammarAddenda

Adverbs with 'e' come after the object sentence and before the 'e', e.g. paw Duj wej 'e' vIlegh "I haven't seen the ship arrive yet". [HQ v1n2p11]

When the document was copied into the wiki, the typographical conventions used by ter'eS were lost. This grammar addendum (6.2.5/1) was set in italics, which he used to indicate "accepted usage", rather than being a specific quote. The citation is clearly in error: Captain Krankor's HolQeD article in that issue regarding adverbial placement in a Sentence as Object is on pages 4 and 5, and page 11 is in the middle of an interview David Barron did with Marc Okrand. -- ghunchu'wI'

On Fri, Apr 14, 2023 at 9:01 AM Lieven L. Litaer via tlhIngan-Hol < tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org> wrote:

Am 14.04.2023 um 03:48 schrieb Alan Anderson via tlhIngan-Hol:

...

When the document was copied into the wiki, the typographical conventions used by ter'eS were lost.

As the main editor of those pages, I must object

I think he's talking about the *explanation* of the typographical conventions, which I don't see on the wiki either. While the original italicised sentences are italicised in the copy, there's no indication anywhere that italics is meaningful or an explanation of what it means, which I think might've been explained somewhere (perhaps another page) on the original website. -- De'vID

On Fri, Apr 14, 2023 at 2:10 PM Lieven L. Litaer via tlhIngan-Hol < tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org> wrote:

Am 14.04.2023 um 13:31 schrieb De'vID via tlhIngan-Hol:

...

I think he's talking about the *explanation* of the typographical conventions, which I don't see on the wiki either.

Well, again, I must object. I don't know why this can be overseen. Maybe I should add a note saying "Hey, look HERE, read THIS: it explains how to read the page." :-/

It actually is very easy to overlook. I honestly did not see it, and apparently ghunchu'wI' didn't' either.

I don't know why you all don't see it. I think I will add an explanation that uses more words so it is more visible.

The problem is that if you didn't already know the typeface/formatting was meaningful, then you wouldn't notice it in the key, either. It really needs to be explained with words. Key: - things written or spoken by Okrand are on a grey background [on a grey background] - facts inferred from canon are written in normal text [normal text] - accepted usage not on a firm foundation are in italics [italics] (Or something to that effect.) -- De'vID