Re: Klingon grammar

On Fri, Jan 02, 2004 at 08:35:06PM -0500, Ph. D. wrote:
> I just happen to have a copy of TKD handy. You are correct.
> It does cover relative clauses. How did I miss that? I stand
> corrected.
HIvqa' veqlargh!

(That's a "replacement proverb", used by Klingons when they have
made a mistake.  That specific one means "The Devil attacks again!")

> My friend has a favorite scene from the original Star Trek.
> It's when a Klingon commander has been captured by the
> Federation, and he says sarcastically to Capt. Kirk, "You
> have filled my heart with peace!" How would you say that
> in Klingon? Something like "tIqwIj rojmo''e' Datebpu' "?
Since Klingon lacks an instrumental construction or equivalent of
"with", you would have to recast it.  I would use something like
"you have used peace in order to fill my heart" {tIqwIj DatebmeH
roj Dalo'ta'} or "because of you, peace has filled my heart"
{SoHmo' tIqwIj tebpu' roj}.  Probably only one of those two is
correct, the choice depending on whether the subject of {teb}
"fill" is the agent causing the filling to occur or the substance
which constitutes the filling; this is one of many finer points
of vocabulary about which TKD leaves us guessing because it supplies
only a one-word English gloss and no explication.   Many of
these points have been addressed elsewhere, and {teb} may be one
of them, but I'd have to dig through my references; I don't recall
offhand.

(I used {...} instead of "..." to avoid problems with initial/final
<'>s running together with the quotation marks; this is common practice
on the KLI mailing list).

-marqoS