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

[André Müller]

Just a small correction to the word order, your second sentence should be:

{tlhInganpu' wIleghlu'}
‘we Klingons are being seen’

Compare with the frequent construction {X tu'lu'} ‘there is/are X’ – an
exact counterpart of the Swedish ‘der finns X’ (sp?), or "X is found" /
"someone finds X".

BTW, I've never seen any construction like the Klingon -lu' construction in
any natural Terran language, in terms of indefinite subject + changed
agreement pattern + no word order change. I'm not even sure how to call it,
it's neither a passive, nor a normal impersonal construction, nor an
antipassive or anticausative. Fascinating.
This might be one of the few things in Klingon that are truly unique to it,
without any parallel in a natural language.

- André
On Oct 20, 2015 23:42, "Anthony Appleyard" <a.appleyard at btinternet.com>
wrote:

> Compare:-
>
> {wIlegh tlhInganpu'} :: we Klingons see :: Latin [Tlingani videmus]
>
> {wIlegh*lu'* tlhInganpu'} :: one sees us Klingons / we Klingons are seen
> :: Latin [Tlingani videmu*r*]
>
> This "impersonal" looks somewhat like a Latin passive in verb suffix use,
> but like an impersonal in the word order.
>
> wide = legh, mus = wI, r = lu'
>
> *From:* Will Martin [mailto:lojmitti7wi7nuv at gmail.com]
>
> *Sent:* October 20, 2015 8:45
> *To:* tlhingan-hol at kli.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Klingon Word of the Day: ghoD
>
> I’m sure this was discussed to death years ago, but it occurs to me that
> {lu-} is the only prefix used with {-lu’} that indicates a direct object.
> It’s further interesting by reversing the number of the subject and object,
> since the unknown subject is singular, but the known object is plural,
> while the prefix suggests the opposite.
>
> It’s one of the weird exceptions that makes the rule, I suppose...
>
>
>
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