[Tlhingan-hol] KLBC: Due to the refusal, the topic is forgotten

[Rohan Fenwick]

ghItlhpu' Fatairae, jatlh:
> ghojmoHwI''e' yIlIjbe'lu'!
jang 'arHa, jatlh:
> Concerning -mo' and 'e', your sentences are correct except that I'm
> not sure what you are trying to do with the 'e' in your first sentence.

I think I see what's going on - using the topic as kind of a vocative statement - "hey, Teacher" (leave them kids alone?? :P ).

If that's the case, Fatairae, there's a neat little thing we have in paq'batlh: the word {'o}. It seems to be pretty formal, but it's a particle that comes in front of a name to give it what's called a vocative (calling upon, or invoking) sense, like "o" in English (as in "o Lord, have mercy", or "greetings, o Tim". So absent any other punctuation, you have:

qeylIS yIlIjQo'
"do not forget Kahless"

but

'o qeylIS yIlIjQo'
"do not forget, (o) Kahless!"

You don't have to use {'o}, and to be honest, this is one of those areas where you'd just use punctuation to disambiguate. Don't forget that in a romanised text you can feel free to make use of roman punctuation as well.

jatlhtaH 'arHa:
> I think you are saying "Teacher! Do not forget!" However you should
> use -Qo' to make imperatives negative -- {yIlIjQo'}. I don't think you
> can use -lu' with an imperative.
> I hope this helps! jatlhwI'pu', what do you think?

On {-Qo'}, you're absolutely right. There's no reason why {-be'} couldn't appear *in addition* to {-Qo'} if added to the right suffix - {yISuvrupbe'Qo'} "do not be unready to fight" should work - but I don't think that it'd surface very often in practice.

As for imperatives plus {-lu'}? I'm honestly not 100% sure. Prima facie I would have said no, but given the agreement structure for {Daqawlu'} "someone remembers you" from TKD, I don't think I can think of a grammatical reason to stay away from {yIqawlu'} "be remembered (by someone)!", which formally has the same agreement structure.

However, there is a *cultural*, or sociolinguistic, reason why I don't think this would happen. This comes from KGT. In imperatives of adjectival verbs like {HoS} "be strong", {val} "be clever", and so forth, it's unidiomatic to say simply {yIHoS} "be strong!" or {yIval} "be clever!". (This is a rule often ignored or forgotten even by the very best and most experienced Klingonists. It's my personal bugbear, what can I say.) Instead, we're told in KGT (p.117) that Klingons normally add {-'eghmoH} "cause oneself to" to such verbs to give them an overt agent subject: {yIHoS'eghmoH} "be strong!" (literally, "cause yourself to be strong!").

What this shows is that although {yIHoS} and {yIval} aren't strictly ungrammatical, Klingon speakers prefer to express imperatives by treating the ordered person as an agent: as capable of acting to do something about a situation. But the problem with {-lu'} is that its whole purpose is to remove an overt agent subject from a verb: {vIta'} "I do it", {ta'lu'} "it is done (by someone)". That means that in a sentence like {yIqawlu'} "be remembered (by someone)!", you're trying to do a bit of both: to give an agentive order to the addressee referred to by the imperative prefix, but deleting the agent subject with the suffix {-lu'}.

Short answer: I think {yIqawlu'} is in principle grammatically sensible, but in practice would never be said by a native speaker. The Klingon equivalent of "colourless green ideas sleep furiously", perhaps.

QeS 'utlh
 		 	   		  
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