[Tlhingan-hol] Weather infinitives

[David Trimboli]

On 7/24/2012 4:01 AM, De'vID wrote:
>
> De'vID:
>> And don't forget Sonnet 116, where {jev} has {mud} as its subject.
>
> According to the thread (
> http://www.kli.org/tlhIngan-Hol/2012/March/msg00158.html ), there were
> two poems and MO did the translation for one of them.  MO wrote:
> "Here's what we came up with. (By "we," I mean a friend who's an
> expert Klingon speaker and I. He did one; I did the other.)"
>
> So this may or may not have been written by MO, but even if he didn't
> do this one he looked it over and approved it.
>
> The relevant part is:
>      jevqu'taHvIS muD ral, bejlI' parmaq.
>      Qombe'! nISbe' jevwI', 'ej not ruS baq.
>
> This seems to corroborate that weather words have subjects.
> Specifically, {jev} has the subject {muD}.

I'm not questioning whether weather verbs can take subjects. They 
obviously and explicitly can. I mean when one is talking about the 
weather in normal conversation. (A translation of "It is an ever-fixed 
mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken" is not talking about 
the weather in normal conversation!)

Let's put it another way. When Marc looked up and said {SIS}, did he 
actually elide a subject? What word was elided? Is it common practice to 
elide the subject when speaking of the weather? Why would this be 
limited to discussing the weather?

I'm perfectly happy to accept this as an elided subject rather than a 
form of Klingon infinitive, though I don't think anything is conclusive.

Perfect programmers need not reply.

-- 
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/