[Tlhingan-hol] vulqa'nganpu'

[Rohan Fenwick]

ghItlhpu' lojmIt tI'wI' nuv, jatlh:
> In English, we sometimes start a sentence with "But", but so far
> as we know, in Klingon, "but" is always a conjunction combining
> two sentences to form one longer sentence, and in Klingon you
> can't have a Sentence As Object construction with {'e'} referring
> back to a conjoined sentence.

The way you phrase this last part implies a certainty about this prohibition that I'm pretty sure we don't have.

taH:
> The {'e'} refers to the preceding sentence, not the first half of the
> current sentence.

Because syntactically {'e'} is identified as a pronoun in TKD (sections 5.1, 6.2.5), I don't see why there's any reason it can't reach across the "conjunction gap", if you like, to make reference to something in the previous clause (which is itself also formally a sentence; see TKD 6.2.5, where it says that the conjoined parts must be well-formed sentences). We know that other pronouns are quite capable of reaching across a conjunction for their anaphoric reference:

pa' ghomta' SuvwI' 'ej pa' loS chaH
"the warriors had assembled there and they [the warriors] were waiting there" (paq'batlh: paq'raD 14.3)

so since {'e'} is also said to be a pronoun, I wouldn't say that there's any formal reason why it couldn't do the same thing, simply taking the entire sentence as the basis for its anaphora rather than one of its arguments:

pa' ghomta' SuvwI' 'ej 'e' vIlegh
"the warriors had assembled there and I saw that [the warriors had assembled there]"

Just because two sentences are joined with a conjunction to make one larger sentence doesn't mean that the two conjoined clauses are not themselves also sentences.

QeS 'utlh 		 	   		  
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