[Tlhingan-hol] Klingon Word of the Day: naj

[Bellerophon, modeler]

On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 3:56 PM, David Trimboli <david at trimboli.name> wrote:

> Reported speech uses different rules than other sentence-as-object
> constructions. This was clarified for us by Okrand back in the days of the
> MSN newsgroups, but the basics are in TKD.
>
> The only verbs allowed to report a direct quotation are {jatlh} and {ja'}.
> When used this way the sentence expressing the speaking and the quotation
> are pushed together end to end, in either order. The quotation is not the
> object of the sentence expressing speech; this is not an application of the
> prefix trick.



> You cannot put {yInajchu'} between {puqbe'wI'vaD} and {jIjatlh}, because
> you can't squeeze a sentence between the verb and its beneficiary. You
> simply shove the two separate sentences together


That's the value of this list! If you study grammar on your own and
construct sentences, you may think you're doing it right, but how do you
know what you missed? There is no substitute for making mistakes and having
them corrected!

Actually, sentence-as-object constructions always seem to keep the clauses
separated. I believe the source of my confusion was relative clauses, which
can occur in sentences like {mulegh QIppu'bogh yaS}, where the main clause
{mulegh yaS} is interrupted by the relative clause.

Back to verb prefixes, I take it {jatlh} is the only verb that uses
intransitive prefixes when a direct object is specified (in the case of
{jatlh}, the direct quote). According to mughom.wikia.com (who started that
anyway? I see some contributions by Qurgh, but a lot more by Anonymous),
the object of {ja'} is the addressee rather than the direct quote, so one
uses it thus: yaS vIja' <direct quote>, rather than yaS jIja' <direct
quote>.

DaH Qongrupmo' puqbe'wI'vaD jIjatlhnIS <yInajchu'>.

~'eD


-- 
My modeling blog:          http://bellerophon-modeler.blogspot.com/
My other modeling blog:  http://bellerophon.blog.com/
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