[Tlhingan-hol] vulqa'nganpu'

[Will Martin]

Comments below.

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



> On Jan 5, 2016, at 7:31 AM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> lojmIt tI'wI' nuv:
>> A compound sentence is not two sentences.
> 
> This is what TKD says about compound sentences:
> <Two sentences may be joined together to form a longer compound
> sentence. Both sentences must be able to stand alone as properly
> formed sentences. When combined, they simply come one after the other,
> joined by a conjunction (see section 5.3).>
> 
> It also says that it's possible to use pronouns in the second sentence
> to refer to nouns in the first sentence:
> <It is possible, however, to use pronouns rather than nouns in the
> second of the joined sentences.>
> 
> It does not explicitly say that you can use {'e'} as the object of the
> second sentence to refer back to the first sentence, but it doesn't
> say you can't either, and given that you can use pronouns in the
> second sentence, I don't see why not.

In this case, your logic is completely missing the point. He’s merely explaining that it is acceptable to use pronouns in the second sentence to refer to explicit nouns in the first sentence, since the context of what nouns the second half of the compound sentence is discussing has already been set by the first half of the compound sentence. We do this in English, as in, “You must obey your captain, but you don’t need to like him.” This has nothing to do with Sentence as Object (SAO). {‘e’} is not like other pronouns. It’s not referring to a noun. It’s taking an entire sentence as a noun.

I can’t say with authority that it is wrong to use {‘e’} to refer to the first half of a compound sentence, but I CAN say as a person who’s been speaking Klingon since qep’a’ wa’DIch that it is weird.

There’s ONE canon example, and it’s a weird example that isn’t perfectly obvious that it even IS what you’d like to think it is. That’s the beginning and the end of evidence that it’s okay to do it. So do it, but please stop TALKING ABOUT DOING IT as if it were perfectly fine and normal. It isn’t, and saying it is over and over again won’t make it any more well formed than it is by its own nature unless we get more canon that is less weird and more explicitly obvious as to what is being said.

> lojmIt tI'wI' nuv:
>> As to {qama’pu’ DIHoH ‘ej ‘e’ luSov}, it is simply unlike anything described in TKD or shown in any canon before this newest canon (paq-whatever)
> 
> TKD describes individual parts of grammar isolated from other parts
> for clarity and simplicity. It doesn't describe how every pair of such
> parts work together. Many such pairs don't appear in TKD, and yet we
> accept them.
> 
> In section 6.2.1, we're told that we can put sentence conjunctions
> between two sentences…

… to form a new, single, compound sentence.

> In section 6.2.5, we're told that one sentence
> can be the object of another. That's it. There's nothing about how
> you're not allowed to use {'e'} in the second sentence to refer back
> to the first.

But once the two sentences are joined with a conjunction, they no longer function as a pair of discrete sentences. They form a new, longer sentence. It’s not that much different from:

qechlIj DaDel.

vIyaj.

qechlIj DaDelbogh vIyaj.

By adding the Type 9 verb suffix to {DaDel}, you’ve taken a whole sentence and made it a part of a larger sentence. What was a pair of sentences is now one sentence.

qechlIj DaDel.

vIyaj.

qechlIj DaDel ‘ej vIyaj.

By adding the conjunction, you’ve changed the structure of what was a pair of sentences in order to create one larger whole.

> Your objection to putting these two rules together seems to be that
> the resulting construction isn't "pretty". But that's entirely
> subjective. I find the construction aesthetically neutral. It's no
> more or less pretty than the analogous English construction: "we kill
> prisoners, and they know it.”

… which is a single English sentence.

If I write something and I use a lot of conjunctions to tie things together so that the result is substantially longer than most normal sentences, but they continue to wrap around what one might consider to be the definitive single idea that the definition of sentence calls for and the resulting length borders on the ludicrous, far exceeding the norm for what any reasonable person would consider to be a sentence, and one generally looks at that sentence with distain, and the editors of whatever publication it might be intended for reject that sentence, they would refer to my error as “A run-on sentence”.

They would not call it an excessively long sequence of conjoined sentences. They would call it a run-on sentence. *A* run-on sentence. ONE run-on sentence. The part of speech that makes it a single entity is a conjunction.

> But, okay, let's say that using {'e'} in the second sentence to refer
> to the first in a conjunction is disallowed. How would you express the
> following, in Klingon?
> "We kill prisoners, and they know it.”

It would help to know who “they” are, and what “it” is, and there are many ways to say it. The simplest is {qama’pu’ DIHoH ‘ej luSov.} Context would tell you exactly as much in Klingon about who “they” are and what they know as your English statement does.

> "We kill prisoners, but they don't know it.”

qama’pu’ DIHoH ‘ach luSovbe’.

> "Either we kill prisoners, or they believe we do.”

qama’pu’ DIHoH pagh luSov.

> "We kill prisoners and/or they believe we do.”

qama’pu’ DIHoH ghap luSov.

> I can think of two ways to express each of the above, with and without
> your restriction. I don't know if I'd call one of them "prettier", but
> it's certainly more compact.

Assuming that you allow the Klingon to be as vague as the English, a conjunction without {‘e’} is more compact than to include it.

> -- 
> De'vID
> 
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