[Tlhingan-hol] Weather infinitives

[Robyn Stewart]

I think it's an elided, unstated subject almost. perfectly analogous to English "it" in the equivalent statement. 

I think a Klingon pressured to provide the subject would respond pretty much the way a non-linguistically read  English speaker would: perhaps suggest muD/'eng/chal/qo' or just say that there isn't one, it's just the way you say it. 

I think it came about that it works this way in Klingon because Enfludh is Marc's native language and when he isn't going out of his way to find an alien  way to do something, he falls back on what comes naturally to him. 

And my iPod just tried to autocorrect him to Hom. :-)

-Qov

 

On 2012-07-24, at 7:02, David Trimboli <david at trimboli.name> wrote:

> 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/
> 
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