[Tlhingan-hol] Weather infinitives

[ghunchu'wI' 'utlh]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 2:13 PM, David Trimboli <david at trimboli.name> wrote:
> I was thinking about how Okrand side-stepped the issue of the subject of SIS
> (and peD) by simply looking up and saying, {SIS!}

He didn't sidestep it. He didn't state the subject when he *used* the
word, but he had already indicated what it was.

http://www.kli.org/tlhIngan-Hol/1998/May/msg00518.html
| [reported by DloraH]
| SISlu', altho grammaticlly correct, he didn't particularly like.  Someone
| COULD use it but to me it sounds like they skipped science class and don't
| know what the subject is.
| You can also give it an object and say things like the clouds rained down
| cats and dogs. ...or something like that; you get the idea.

> Although Klingon has no
> inflection for infinitives†, I wonder if speaking of the weather is done by
> treating the weather-verb as an infinitive.

What reason is there to think that might be the case?

> 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.

Nope. If we accept that DloraH was accurately relaying the
conversation, {SIS} has a subject.

> † That is, using a verb that is not limited to a particular subject.

Unless you've forgotten about the "indefinite subject" suffix {-lu'}
-- and I know you haven't -- I don't understand what you mean when you
say "Klingon has no inflection for infinitives".

-- ghunchu'wI'