[Tlhingan-hol] -Ha' on adverbs

[Rohan Fenwick - QeS 'utlh]

jIjatlhpu':
> As Qov said, Marc basically implied that -Ha' is *grammatically* legal on
> any adverb, but for some it's semantically nonsensical. It was 'angghal who
> pointed out during the conversation that ??chaqHa' would be weird, and
> ghunchu'wI' then thought of rut. So the sense we got is that while ??chaqHa'
> or ??rutHa' are grammatically legal, they just aren't usefully meaningful
> (like chIS'egh or HolDaq). ngugh, ghIq and DaH probably wouldn't work with
> -Ha' for the same reason.

mujang De'vID, jatlh:
> Why wouldn't {DaHHa'} work?  We have {SIbI'} "immediately" and
> {SIbI'Ha'} "later, eventually" (meaning derived from Klingon
> Monopoly[1]).

'e' vISov.

> I'd understand {DaHHa'} as an urgent version of {SIbI'Ha'}, in the same way
> that {SIbI'} is an urgent version of {DaH}.

I'm having trouble coming to grips with the distinction. Why is DaHHa' the urgent one of the -Ha'-ed pair?

> {DaH qama' yIHoH} "Kill the prisoner now!"
> {DaHHa'} "Not now!"

Ah; you make a fair point here. I guess {DaHHa'} "sometime other than now" might work, though I don't sense the nuance of sense between it and SIbI'Ha' that you do.

> (i.e., We still want to kill the prisoner, but for strategic reasons
> we should do it later; you wouldn't use {SIbI'Ha'} here because you're
> interrupting someone's command, but after things have calmed down you
> might assure the other person, {SIbI'Ha' wIHoH}.)

See, I would have thought SIbI'Ha' is exactly the word one should use to countermand someone else's order to kill a prisoner. "Sometime other than immediately."

> If {DaHHa'} doesn't work, how else would you say "not now"?

I normally hate answering questions with other questions, but I will here: how would you have said "not now" last week, before we knew anything about this?

> I suppose you could repeat the verb: {DaH yIHoHQo'}.  But this doesn't
> put the emphasis on the right thing (i.e., "Now, don't kill the prisoner"
> is not quite the same as "don't kill the prisoner now").

In Klingon {DaH yIHoHQo'} can carry either sense. From PK we have the following:

Hoch DaSopbe'chugh, batlh bIHeghbe'
eat everything or you will die without honour

showing that {batlh bIHeghbe'} can as happily have the sense "you will not [die honourably]" as it can be "you will [not die] honourably". So in {DaH yIHoHQo'}, either interpretation is possible: it could be "do not [kill him now]" or "[do not kill him] now". So I would happily render "don't kill the prisoner now" as {DaH yIHoHQo'}.

> I'd also understand {ngughHa'} as "at a different time"

I guess I see that: "not at the same time, at some other time". Though it seems awfully vague and I doubt it would see much use.

> and {ghIqHa'} as "not subsequently, after some time".

So in other words, basically equivalent to SIbI'Ha'? The basic purpose of ghIq is to mark an action as being later in time than another: {jISop. ghIq jIQong} "I ate. After that, I slept." By how much is left unstated. I don't get how ghIqHa' should in some way project Qong even further into the future to be "after some time". If anything I'd understand ghIqHa' as "before that, priorly" (so like wejHa', we've already got more than one conflicting meaning between us), and since we already have -pa' for "before", I wouldn't see much utility for ghIqHa' in that sense either.

> {Ha'DIbaH HoH tlhIngan, ghIq Ha'DIbaH Sop tlhIngan.  Ha'DIbaH HoH
> tera'ngan, 'ach ghIqHa' Ha'DIbaH Sop tera'ngan.  Huj tera'nganpu'.}

Odd to the point of incomprehensibility for me.

QeS
 		 	   		  
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