[Tlhingan-hol] KLBC: "shut up or I'll hit you"

[lojmIttI'wI'nuv]

Agreed. This is one of those grammatical proclamations that is harder to get used to if you’ve been speaking Klingon years before it was announced. Now, there’s an extra thing to remember. It’s likely easier for newer speakers who can just take it as yet one more thing to learn, without years of counterexamples in memory considered to be normal speech.

In general, I think it is considered better form to use {-‘eghmoH} on stative verbs in imperatives. I don’t think it’s horrible form to forget it, since we do have canon that does exactly that (which was written before the rule existed), but it’s better form to do it.

Okrand has explained that when we get a new emperor, the language changes. Maybe the emperor just started doing this, and now the rest of us need to learn to do it if we want to get anywhere on The Counsel, or to advance the political well-being of our Great Houses.

The guy on the street probably cares less.

tawDaq jIHtaH.

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



> On Feb 25, 2016, at 9:50 AM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
> On 2/25/2016 9:30 AM, De'vID wrote:
>> Qov:
>>>> I thought of it, but the -choH seemed to mitigate the issue for me.  I
>>>> suppose it's because yItamchoH is canonical.
>>>> 
>>>> Do you yourself think that yItamchoH should now be considered an error? I
>>>> think yItamchoH and yItam'eghmoH both say to do something, while *{yItam}
>>>> says to be something, and perhaps that doesn't sound like a command.
>> 
>> SuStel:
>>> I think {yItamchoH} should be considered a possible exception to the rule,
>>> which we know is occasionally broken. But I'm not prepared to take a stand
>>> on it one way or another.
>> 
>> {yItamchoH} is in TKD and also in the Klingon CD (which makes it
>> doubly canonical):
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUwSJai1cps
>> 
>> KGT says: "Generally, when a verb describing a state of being (for
>> example, {tuj} "be hot") is used in the imperative form, the suffixes
>> {-'egh} (reflexive suffix) and {-moH} ("cause") are used as well".
>> 
>> I don't think these are contradictory. It's wrong to command someone
>> to *be* in a state. But {yItamchoH} is a command to *change* from a
>> prior state to a new one.
> 
> But KGT doesn't say it applies when you command someone to be in a state; it just says it applies when a verb describing a state of benig is used in the imperative form. You're jumping to a conclusion: {yItamchoH} certainly is a verb describing a state of being used in the imperative form. Maybe your conclusion in fact describes what's going on, but we have no evidence of it.
> 
> I personally think {yItamchoH} is simply one of those cases where Okrand made up a rule AFTER a contradictory example already existed. He may even have noticed this—though he surely does not keep track of his own canon as fanatically as we do—and thought along your lines, that the rule should apply only to commands without other aspectual information.
> 
> The point is, we shouldn't take for granted that {yItamchoH} represents a general exception to the {-'eghmoH} rule. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. We don't have enough evidence.
> 
> -- 
> SuStel
> http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>
> 
> 
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