[Tlhingan-hol] Hellraiser Bloodline

[Rhona Fenwick]

ghItlhpu' lojmIt tI'wI' nuv, jatlh:
> Basically, many Klingon speakers, especially Okrand, forget the prefix
> {lu-} in many settings, and he pushed out what is, for our very limited
> canon overall, a LOT of canon where he forgot to use {lutu’lu’}.

jangpu' SuStel, jatlh:
> Or never intended it in the first place. The explanation of {tu'lu'} in 
> TKD is vague enough to leave open the possibility that Klingons use it 
> as a fixed phrase.

I'm mostly with SuStel on this one, with one exception: I don't think TKD is vague on the topic at all, and Marc's canon usage has stood entirely in support of the statement as strictly written in TKD. There was a thread some time ago ("Greetings from Maltz", c. 2013) in which the topic of {tu'lu'} was revisited, and it was noted there that many Earth languages also have funky irregularities in number-agreement, and especially when it comes to "there is/there are" constructions. Qov said:

"I'm fascinated by the fact that Klingon seems to have done it on its own without Mark [sic] planning it into the language. Maybe t's just something that languages do."

This is what I said in reply:

"Possibly, though I'm pretty much convinced that Marc likely planned it all along: he's actually been entirely consistent with his use of {tu'lu'} in canon, and it appears with explicitly plural objects in TKD, PK, SP2, KCD, KGT and BoP. Conversely, I'm not aware of a single canon example of {lutu'lu'}. Which is now making me rethink whether I should use it with the "there are" meaning at all. Upon rereading, the TKD paragraph on the construction seems pretty explicit that the "there is" meaning is associated with a null prefix."

Just to remind everyone, what TKD says is this (p. 39):

"When used with the verb {tu'} "find, observe" and a third-person singular subject prefix (0), the resulting verb form {tu'lu'} "someone/something finds it" is often translated by English "there is.""
{naDev puqpu' tu'lu'} "there are children around here, someone/something finds children here"

In other words, as De'vID noted back in 2013, the TKD example not only explicitly calls out the use of the third-person *singular* prefix, but also gives a plural noun in its example of the construction to which it refers. The statement in TKD could be taken to be a generalisation, of course, but the additional fact is that (AFAIK) Okrand has never - not in even one canon instance - used {lutu'lu'} for the "there is/are" meaning in canon. It is always {tu'lu'}, and appears as such even with explicit plural objects in at least seven distinct canon sources (TKD, KGT, PK, BoP, paq'batlh, SP2, and KCD).

For that reason, I'm still convinced that the use of {lutu'lu'} is entirely unidiomatic in {ta' Hol}: while not technically ungrammatical, it would stick out like a smooth forehead to any native speaker of Klingon.

QeS 'utlh
 		 	   		  
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