Comparing Adverbs
There is the question how to "intensify" an
adverb, i.e. "quickly" ➞ "very quickly".
It would be convenient if we could place the
rover suffix -qu' on the adverb, but that can't be done, and the suggestion of placing
-qu' on the verb which the adverb modifies seems to be the only logical way to do this. It is possible that because of Klingon's rigid
word order, the ADVERBIAL + VERB form a unit and therefore suffixes emphasize - or can emphasize - the verbal unit as a whole since adverbials cannot take an affix (with the possible exception of
-Ha').
Example with nom/QIt
Actually, we've seen this use of
-qu' adding its emphasis to the
adverbial before:
nom yIghoSqu'
Maximum speed.
If we combine that with the following phrase from
ST5:
cha'maH vagh vatlhvI' Hong. QIt yIghoS!
Slow to one quarter impulse power.
One may theoretically be able to produce this model:
QIt yIghoSqu'
Minimum speed.
(meaning "As slowly as possible")
Example with pe'vIl
By modifying the example:
tIqIpqu' 'ej nom tIqIp
Hit them hard and hit them fast.
you may be able to say:
pe'vIl tIqIpqu'
Hit them really, really hard!
(i.e. Hit them as hard as you can!)
References
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