Re: ??<<tlhoyHa'>>

["QeS lagh" <qeslagh@hotmail.com>]

ghItlhpu' voragh:

>   When {tlhoy} is used, it denotes that the action expressed by the
>   verb is what is being overly done or done too much.

ghItlhpu' Quvar:

>Does {tlhoyHa'} mean what I think it means?

I wish, I wish, I wish that we could have a clearer idea on how productive 
<-Ha'> is with adverbs. :)

The only statements Maltz (indirectly) made that I could find were that he 
accepted <<batlhHa'>> ("dishonourably"), but balked at *<<vajHa'>> ("not 
thus, not in this way"). <tlhoy> would be a good candidate for the suffix 
<-Ha'>, but AFAIK <-Ha'> qua adverbial suffix has not been clarified much by 
Dr Okrand beyond what he says about <<batlhHa'>> and *<<vajHa'>>.

Now, I think that this is a perfect time to release some thoughts I have had 
on the nature of <-Ha'> and, indeed, to the evolution of the entire of 
Klingon. (This doesn't strictly relate to modern Klingon, but more to older 
stages of the language.) Tighten your seat belts:

I theorise that at one point {Ha'} was an inverting clitic, not really a 
verb suffix. Part of this is due to my idea that Old Klingon was either (a) 
an isolating language or (b) an inflecting language. (I think it was a bit 
of a combination of both; the similarities between <Sop> and <Soj>, <jatlh> 
and <jat> (and maybe <QaQ> and <qaq>) for instance, appear to be more than 
coincidence. I've written a paper on Old Klingon as an isolating language; 
if anyone's interested, I can send them a copy of the first draft.)

Now, {Ha'} would only be able to be used as a clitic with those words where 
a binary opposition may sensibly occur:

    "too much" (<tlhoy>) becomes "too little" (??<tlhoyHa'>)
    "honourably" (<batlh>) becomes "dishonourably" (<batlhHa'>)
    "to lock" (<ngaQ>) becomes "to unlock" (<ngaQHa'>)
    "to clean" (<Say'moH>) becomes "to dirty" (<Say'Ha'moH>).

{vaj} falls through the holes, because there's no real opposite of "thus". 
("Not thus" might be better rendered as {vajbe'} in this older stage.) 
Similarly, ALL nouns and pronouns fall through the holes: what's the 
opposite of a tree, or of me for that matter? Eventually, since the clitic 
is used mainly with verbs (and adverbs?), {Ha'} is regrammaticalised as a 
verb and as a verb suffix, and those adverbs which used it are relexicalised 
as single words (since the suffix doesn't appear to be universally 
applicable). In this scenario, there is no longer any adverb suffix <-Ha'>.

This whole thing's just a theory, and I'd be glad to have some experts 
picking it apart in order to improve on it. But in a very large nutshell, 
that's why I think <-Ha'> probably isn't for general use with adverbs. 
(Although, Quvar, I agree that ??<<tlhoyHa'>> doesn't seem to leave much 
room for misinterpretation. Maybe it's one of the relexicalised adverbs, and 
we just don't know about it yet. jISovbe'chu'.)

Savan.

QeS lagh

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