can I say {jaghpu' chaH chaH'e'} ?
This isn't something I'd actually do, but - as always - I'm trying to understand how things work. So.. We know we can say: jaghpu' chaH romuluSnganpu''e' enemies are romulans (lets flush down the toilet the "as for.." meaning, since its irrelevant to the question). Would it be grammatically wrong to say the following ? jaghpu' chaH chaH'e' enemies are they I know we could say {jaghpu' chaH}, but my problem is, whether it would be grammatically wrong to say too the {jaghpu' chaH chaH'e'}. ~ mayqel qunen'oS
On 1/21/2020 9:11 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
Would it be grammatically wrong to say the following ?
jaghpu' chaH chaH'e' enemies are they
I know we could say {jaghpu' chaH}, but my problem is, whether it would be grammatically wrong to say too the {jaghpu' chaH chaH'e'}.
Ungrammatical. No, there's no rule against it, but it's obviously not said this way. The *chaH* is NOT the verb /are./ It's the pronoun /they, them./ In Klingon, pronouns are not verbs, even when they are the center of a copula sentence. *jaghpu' chaH romuluSnganpu''e' */As for Romulans, enemies them./ Nothing is happening in this sentence, and no condition is being described. This is an identity. Identities are handled by pronouns in Klingon. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
On Jan 21, 2020, at 09:23, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
jaghpu' chaH romuluSnganpu''e' As for Romulans, enemies them.
By that logic, why wouldn’t {jaghpu’ chaH chaH’e’} be possible — if redundant and possibly overly dramatic? “As for them, they are enemies.” Certainly not something one would say in normal conversation, but being dramatic for the same of emphasis? Seems plausible. —jevreH
On 1/21/2020 9:42 AM, jevreh@qeylis.net wrote:
On Jan 21, 2020, at 09:23, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote: *jaghpu' chaH romuluSnganpu''e'*
/As for Romulans, enemies them./
By that logic, why wouldn’t {jaghpu’ chaH chaH’e’} be possible — if redundant and possibly overly dramatic?
“As for them, they are enemies.”
Certainly not something one would say in normal conversation, but being dramatic for the same of emphasis? Seems plausible.
Look, I can't disprove it. I also can't disprove *chaH chaH chaH'e',* or even *ghaH ghaH ghaH je chaH ghaH'e' ghaH'e' ghaH'e' je, *but they're still not right. Between clearly grammatical and clearly ungrammatical there lies the hazy middle-ground of "I see what you did there." /Grammatical/ doesn't only mean /follows the rules of syntax;/ it also means /What you say is accepted//./ -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
SuStel:
jaghpu' chaH romuluSnganpu''e' As for Romulans, enemies them.
oh - my - qeylIS ! This is so beautiful ! All these years, I was under the impression, that in a sentence as {jaghpu' chaH romuluSnganpu''e'}, the {chaH} was actually the greek/english verb "be". Thank you for explaining this ! ~ mayqel qunen'oS
On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 9:22 AM SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
Ungrammatical. No, there's no rule against it, but it's obviously not said this way. The *chaH* is NOT the verb *are.* It's the pronoun *they, them.* In Klingon, pronouns are not verbs, even when they are the center of a copula sentence.
I'm not sure it's quite so clearly defined as that. Copula pronouns can take verbal suffixes, after all. And we know from the latest qepHom ( http://www.qephom.de/book/qepHom2019_p_21.jpg) that not all Klingons analyze words into distinct parts of speech the same way. It's possible that a Klingon might consider *chaH* to be both a pronoun and a verb, in the same way that some people analyze *ret* as both a noun and a verb in different contexts. To me, *jaghpu' chaH chaH'e'* doesn't feel ungrammatical so much as redundant or a bit clumsy, like the speaker missed some shorter way to express the same idea. If *chaH* *is* conceived of solely as a pronoun, I wonder if something like *jaghpu' chaH'e'* would work to emphasize/topicalize it.
On 1/21/2020 11:28 AM, nIqolay Q wrote:
On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 9:22 AM SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name <mailto:sustel@trimboli.name>> wrote:
Ungrammatical. No, there's no rule against it, but it's obviously not said this way. The *chaH* is NOT the verb /are./ It's the pronoun /they, them./ In Klingon, pronouns are not verbs, even when they are the center of a copula sentence.
I'm not sure it's quite so clearly defined as that.
See my other post. This falls in the area between clearly grammatical and clearly ungrammatical. There certainly is some verbiness to pronouns when they operate in an identity, in that the identity may be continuous or completed or beginning or interrogative or conditional, etc. But pronouns still aren't verbs. They don't take verb prefixes, they don't take objects, they can't be nominalized, and when they're not tying two nouns together they are the subject of the sentence. *chaH* doesn't mean /they are;/ it just means /they, them./ The /are/ comes from translating it into English, which requires a form of the verb /be/ in this kind of sentence. In the Klingon, you just shove a pronoun next to a noun to make them equivalent. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
Am 21.01.2020 um 17:28 schrieb nIqolay Q:
I'm not sure it's quite so clearly defined as that. Copula pronouns can take verbal suffixes, after all. And we know from the latest qepHom (http://www.qephom.de/book/qepHom2019_p_21.jpg) that not all Klingons analyze words into distinct parts of speech the same way.
Be careful not to over-interpret this too much. It was only said that verbs and nouns can be the same word, based on TKD; Don't interpret it too much that words can mean anything now. Proniuns were NEVER treated as a verb, it's only the English translation that uses a verb (to be). -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.klingonisch.de http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/StarTrekDiscovery
On 1/21/2020 11:45 AM, Lieven L. Litaer wrote:
Am 21.01.2020 um 17:28 schrieb nIqolay Q:
I'm not sure it's quite so clearly defined as that. Copula pronouns can take verbal suffixes, after all. And we know from the latest qepHom (http://www.qephom.de/book/qepHom2019_p_21.jpg) that not all Klingons analyze words into distinct parts of speech the same way.
Be careful not to over-interpret this too much. It was only said that verbs and nouns can be the same word, based on TKD; Don't interpret it too much that words can mean anything now. Proniuns were NEVER treated as a verb, it's only the English translation that uses a verb (to be).
Agreed. The text of the qepHom page goes out its way to avoid declaring whether identical nouns and verbs are, in fact, the same word, or whether they're homophonous, but different, words. The TKD Addendum describes "nouns and verbs being identical in form." But nIqolay's point is not without merit: Klingon parts of speech may not be utterly rigid. Of course, there are formally only the three parts of speech: *DIp, wot, chuv,* and a lot of *chuvmey* act like, stand in for, or have properties of *DIpmey* or *wotmey* at times. But there are clearly limits. You could not, for instance, use a pronoun as an adverbial or an adverbial as a pronoun, despite the fact that they're both *chuvmey.* Since we lack vocabulary for the subtypes of *chuvmey, *one might think that Klingon linguists don't care to develop too detailed of a formal description of the structure of their language. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
I like the analysis in this discussion. I’ve always thought that pronouns were not the verb “to be”. Klingon lacks the verb “to be”. It’s just that Klingons use pronouns in a way that we would translate as the verb “to be”. It was pointed out that pronouns can use verbal suffixes, but remember that only a very limited set of verbal suffixes are allowed. We could probably use ANY verbal suffix if pronouns were ever to function as actual verbs. Also, the {-‘e’} on the final noun would be unnecessary if the pronoun were acting as an actual verb. The real point here is that the grammar for pronouns used as “to be” is like the grammar for comparatives: It is unique within the language with its own special rules and limits. You can’t take the grammar of a normal Klingon sentence and try to apply it to sentences built around pronouns used as we understand the verb “to be”. It’s as if it were something from some other language altogether, snipped and dropped into Klingon, without reference to Klingon’s other rules of grammar. If you want to make weird but arguably not illegal constructions, you can, but that won’t make them not weird. charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.
On Jan 21, 2020, at 12:00 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 1/21/2020 11:45 AM, Lieven L. Litaer wrote:
Am 21.01.2020 um 17:28 schrieb nIqolay Q:
I'm not sure it's quite so clearly defined as that. Copula pronouns can take verbal suffixes, after all. And we know from the latest qepHom (http://www.qephom.de/book/qepHom2019_p_21.jpg <http://www.qephom.de/book/qepHom2019_p_21.jpg>) that not all Klingons analyze words into distinct parts of speech the same way.
Be careful not to over-interpret this too much. It was only said that verbs and nouns can be the same word, based on TKD; Don't interpret it too much that words can mean anything now. Proniuns were NEVER treated as a verb, it's only the English translation that uses a verb (to be). Agreed. The text of the qepHom page goes out its way to avoid declaring whether identical nouns and verbs are, in fact, the same word, or whether they're homophonous, but different, words. The TKD Addendum describes "nouns and verbs being identical in form."
But nIqolay's point is not without merit: Klingon parts of speech may not be utterly rigid. Of course, there are formally only the three parts of speech: DIp, wot, chuv, and a lot of chuvmey act like, stand in for, or have properties of DIpmey or wotmey at times. But there are clearly limits. You could not, for instance, use a pronoun as an adverbial or an adverbial as a pronoun, despite the fact that they're both chuvmey. Since we lack vocabulary for the subtypes of chuvmey, one might think that Klingon linguists don't care to develop too detailed of a formal description of the structure of their language.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
On 1/22/2020 1:52 PM, Will Martin wrote:
I like the analysis in this discussion. I’ve always thought that pronouns were not the verb “to be”. Klingon lacks the verb “to be”. It’s just that Klingons use pronouns in a way that we would translate as the verb “to be”.
It was pointed out that pronouns can use verbal suffixes, but remember that only a very limited set of verbal suffixes are allowed. We could probably use ANY verbal suffix if pronouns were ever to function as actual verbs. Also, the {-‘e’} on the final noun would be unnecessary if the pronoun were acting as an actual verb.
The real point here is that the grammar for pronouns used as “to be” is like the grammar for comparatives: It is unique within the language with its own special rules and limits. You can’t take the grammar of a normal Klingon sentence and try to apply it to sentences built around pronouns used as we understand the verb “to be”.
It’s as if it were something from some other language altogether, snipped and dropped into Klingon, without reference to Klingon’s other rules of grammar.
If you want to make weird but arguably not illegal constructions, you can, but that won’t make them not weird.
lughchu' Hoch Dajatlhpu'bogh 'ej jIQochbe'chu'. SoH 'Iv, 'ej nuqDaq 'oHtaH charghwI' ngebHa''e'? -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
SuStel:
SoH 'Iv, 'ej nuqDaq 'oHtaH charghwI' ngebHa''e'?
fse: I've wondered that too.. Unfortunately though, I know what happened.. Because the real charghwI' continuously impersonates klingons, the romulans abducted him in order to question him, for the purpose of learning secrets of the empire. So, they replaced him with a clone.. I can only imagine the agony, that the real charghwI' is going through on the romulan warbird, as we speak. And I can only hope, that once the questioning is over, he will be returned safely to us. This unfortunate event, proves a point I've been constantly making through the years. Impersonating klingons can only end badly.. tlh: jaSHa' jISIvpu' je.. Do'Ha', qaSpu'bogh wanI' vISov.. tlhIngan lIltaHmo' charghwI', wo' peghmey SovmeH romuluSnganpu', charghwI' lunge'ta', luyu' luneHmo'. 'ej charghwI'na' luqa'meH, naDev charghwI' velqa' lulanta'.. qaStaHvIS poHvam, romuluS veS DujDaq, bep'e' SIQbogh charghwI' vIjal vIneHbe'.. rInDI' yu'taHghachvam, maHvaD charghwI' lucheghmoH romuluSnganpu' 'e' vIjInqu'. qaStaHvIS Hoch DISmey vorgh, vay' vIjatlhtaH, 'ej vay'vam tobchu' qaSpu'bogh wanI'vam Do'Ha'. tlhInganpu' lIlchugh nuv, vaj San qabqu' neH SIQlaH nuvvam.. ~ mayqel qunen'oS
SuStel:
jaghpu' chaH romuluSnganpu''e' As for Romulans, enemies them. chaH doesn't mean they are; it just means they, them. The are comes from translating it into English, which requires a form of the verb be in this kind of sentence. In the Klingon, you just shove a pronoun next to a noun to make them equivalent.
Reading all this, I begun to wonder.. Would you accept the following ? jaghpu' chaH'e' *they* are the enemies ~ mayqel qunen'oS
On 2/4/2020 8:11 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
Would you accept the following ?
jaghpu' chaH'e' *they* are the enemies
I'm going to decline answering further "would you accept" questions. I think you know my answer by now. I think we've also talked about this one before. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
ok ! But how can we say "*they* are the enemies", in a way which is 100% within the boundaries of Ca'Non ? Besides writing {jaghpu' chaH'e'}, which as I understand, moves in the area of "we aren't certain it's correct", I can't think of any other way to say it.. ~ mayqel qunen'oS
On 2/4/2020 9:30 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
But how can we say "*they* are the enemies", in a way which is 100% within the boundaries of Ca'Non ?
Besides writing {jaghpu' chaH'e'}, which as I understand, moves in the area of "we aren't certain it's correct", I can't think of any other way to say it..
Do it the same way you just did it in English. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
participants (6)
-
jevreh＠qeylis.net -
Lieven L. Litaer -
mayqel qunen'oS -
nIqolay Q -
SuStel -
Will Martin