[Tlhingan-hol] vulqa'nganpu'

[lojmIt tI'wI' nuv 'utlh]

{qamapu’ DIHoH ‘e’ luSov} is not a sentence. It is two sentences in Klingon, translated into one sentence in English. It SHOULD be punctuated {qamapu’ DIHOH. ‘e’ luSov.}

TKD, page 65, section 6.2.5:

“What is often a single sentence in English is often two sentences in Klingon.”

 Page 66, immediately following the example you give:

“This sentence is actually two.”

He has to use the word “actually” because he doesn’t use punctuation, and if he doesn’t highlight that what appears to be one sentence is “actually” two, then he has no resources to show us that there are two separate sentences here.

This is the one area in which he did a disservice by choosing to not punctuate at all when presenting Klingon. I understand why he did it. He’s representing written Klingon as a phonetic notation. Spoken Klingon won’t necessarily mark the end of one sentence and the beginning of another.

But {‘e’} is not a conjunction. It’s a pronoun. It refers to the previous sentence. It creates a semantic link to an earlier sentence, but there is no grammatical link between them. I’d expect you to understand that better than most others.

lojmIt tI’wI’ nuv ‘utlh
Door Repair Guy, Retired Honorably



> On Dec 31, 2015, at 10:01 AM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
> On 12/31/2015 8:48 AM, lojmIt tI'wI' nuv wrote:
>> I'm more than a little certain that TKD explains that while we may
>> translate Sentence As Object into one sentence in English, in Klingon,
>> the two sentences are separate. A conjunction makes the two sentences
>> one. They are no longer separate.
> 
> It explains that two separate and complete sentences may be used to form a "complex sentence," either as a "compound sentence" (with a conjunction) or as a "sentence-as-object" (with {'e'} or {net}), but it doesn't say anything about treating the complex sentence as an indivisible whole afterward.
> 
> 
>   bISoptaH pagh bItlhutlhtaH
>   You are either eating or else you are drinking
> 
>   {bISoptaH} is a sentence.
>   {bItlhutlhtaH} is a sentence.
>   {bISoptaH pagh bItlhutlhtaH} is a sentence.
> 
> 
>   qama'pu' DIHoH 'e' luSov
>   the know we kill prisoners
> 
>   {qama'pu' DIHoH} is a sentence.
>   {'e' luSov} is a sentence.
>   {qama'pu' DIHoH 'e' luSov} is a sentence.
> 
> 
> The individual pieces don't cease to be sentences even when the complex whole is also considered a sentence.
> 
> -- 
> SuStel
> http://trimboli.name
> 
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