[Tlhingan-hol] Weather infinitives

Rohan Fenwick - QeS 'utlh qeslagh at hotmail.com
Wed Jul 18 19:26:18 PDT 2012


ghItlhpu' SuStel, jatlh:
> DaH naDev SISchoH. Do'Ha' ghaytan much QoQ ghomwIj* net qIl. Hoch DIS,
> qaStaHvIS cha' jar vaghlogh mamuch. ghaytan DISvam wa' much wIjeghnIS.

Do'Ha'bej. HurDaq muchDI' QoQ muchwI' loQ SuD. 'opben yItchu'bogh QoQ ghom
("marching band") vIjeSpu' jIH 'ej ghom SeghvetlhvaD pIj qay' muD Dotlh.

QoQ jan Dachu''a' qoj bIbom'a'? QoQ jan Dachu'chugh yIngu'.

taH:
> I was thinking about how Okrand side-stepped the issue of the subject of 
> SIS (and peD) by simply looking up and saying, {SIS!} Although Klingon 
> has no inflection for infinitives†, I wonder if speaking of the weather 
> is done by treating the weather-verb as an infinitive.
> 
> In English we avoid the infinitive by adding a dummy subject, "it."
> Klingon might also be treating this as an infinitive verb, but without a 
> form for infinitive it just uses the verb without a subject.

How would you tell the difference? Without the verb prefix to tell one way
or another it's impossible to work out. Even in those languages where the
verb doesn't take an overt subject, there's usually a particular finite
form of the verb chosen (so Spanish uses "llueve", third-person singular,
instead of its true infinitive "llover").

I guess the only way to determine whether this is also true for Klingon is
to find out what would happen with {SISmoH} with plural subject. Would it
be {loSmaH pem loSmaH ram je SISmoH Qunpu'}, or {...*lu*SISmoH Qunpu'}?

QeS 'utlh
 		 	   		  


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