[Tlhingan-hol] Weather infinitives

[Felix Malmenbeck]

I've had similar thoughts, though my interpretation has previously been that it was either a case of subject elision, or possibly an idiom of sorts (that it, something you're just supposed to "get", rather than analyze; this, I feel, would also explain the lack of an aspect suffix, which I would otherwise have expected).

> 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?

While it's hard to say without an exact transcript of their conversation, I think DloraH's e-mail indicates that a subject was elided, considering the formulation "Someone COULD use it [SISlu'] but to me it sounds like they skipped science class and don't know what the subject is."
In other words, if this is at all close to what Marc said, Klingons are expected to know what the "it" is in this case.
I can't rule out the possibility of infinitives, but this doesn't strike me as an example thereof.

WRT "clouds raining cats and dogs":
I'd forgotten about this comment. It's somewhat contradicted by this sentence in paq'batlh:

ghIq QavwI'chaj DuQchu'
qeylIS betleH
chaHDaq SIStaHvIS negh 'Iw

Then Kahless's bat'leth
Pierced the last of them,
Showered with the soldiers' blood.

[paq'batlh - paq'raD, Canto 13, Stanza 5 (p136-137)]

Here, the rain material is the subject of SIS, not the object.
I suppose one could argue that that's also the case in a sentence like {SIS 'engmey}, since the rain that falls down is basically cloud residue.

Starting to wonder if the Klingons have a separate word for "hail", or if they just use SIS or peD with a different subject/object.

________________________________________
From: David Trimboli [david at trimboli.name]
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 16:02
To: tlhingan-hol at stodi.digitalkingdom.org
Subject: Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Weather infinitives

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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