Klingon grammar


The grammar of the Klingon language was created by Marc Okrand for the Star Trek franchise. He first described it in his book The Klingon Dictionary. It is a nominative–accusative, primarily suffixing agglutinative language, and has an object–verb–subject word order. The Klingon language has a number of unusual grammatical features, as it was designed to sound and seem alien, but it has an extremely regular morphology.

Word order

Klingon follows an object–verb–subject word order. Adverbs usually go at the beginning of the sentence and prepositional phrases go before the object.
Sentences can be treated as objects, and the word ʼeʼ is placed after the sentence. ʼeʼ is treated as the object of the next sentence. The adverbs, indirect objects and locatives of the latter sentence go after the subject, but before the ʼeʼ

Nouns

Klingon has three noun classes. The first one is living beings with an innate capacity to use language. The second one is body parts and the third is all other nouns. Klingon has no articles, so the word raS table can mean a table or the table. The difference between the two is inferred from context. The suffixes are ordered based on type number; a type 2 suffix goes before a type 3 suffix, but after a type 1 suffix.

Suffixes

There are five types of noun suffixes. A word cannot have two suffixes of the same type.

Type 1 (size, affection)

This type has three suffixes:
This type of suffix forms plurals. There are three suffixes, one for each noun class.
A noun does not require a plural suffix if a pronoun or pronominal prefix serves to indicate that it is plural, or if it is being used in conjunction with a number.
; Duypuʼ chaH or Duy chaH
; raSmey DIghor or raS DIghor

Type 3 (accuracy)

This type of suffix indicates the speaker's opinion of the applicability of the noun. There are three suffixes:
This type of suffix indicates possession or specifies which object is referred to. It contains twelve suffixes.
There are ten possession suffixes, indicating who is the possessor of the object, which may be a person. For first- and second-person possessors, there are different forms depending on whether the "object" is a being capable of using language.
Possessives1st-person
singular		2nd-person
singular		3rd-person
singular		1st-person
plural		2nd-person
plural		3rd-person
plural
Not capable of using language-wIj-lIj-Daj-maj-raj-chaj
Capable of using language-wIʼ-lIʼ-Daj-maʼ-raʼ-chaj

There are also two determiner suffixes:
Examples:
This type of suffix serves a syntactic role in the sentence. It contains five suffixes.
Klingon verbs mark for aspect but not for tense, which is indicated where necessary by context and by time adverbs. Prefixes mark subject and object. There are ten types of suffix, and as with nouns, a verb can have no more than one suffix of any type. Again as with nouns, the types of suffix must appear in a strict order, indicated by their type number: a type 2 suffix goes before a type 3 suffix, but after a type 1 suffix. A rover suffix can go between any of them.
Unlike English, there is no infinitive. The presentation of the verb stem as an infinitive in this article's example sentences is just to show the individual morphemes.

Prefixes

Klingon verb prefixes mark both the subject and the object.

* Expressed with the type-5 verb suffix -luʼ


LegendMeaning
Not represented
Ø-Null prefix

Prefixes must be present even if the nouns or pronouns they reference are declared explicitly. In certain cases with a third person object, a first or second person indirect object can be omitted by using the first and second person object prefixes instead. This is known as the prefix trick.
Examples:

Type 1 (reflexive/reciprocal)

This type of suffix forms reflexive verbs. There are two suffixes.
This type of suffix deals with the subject's volition. There are five suffixes.
This type of suffix describes the action of the verb. There are two suffixes.
There is only one suffix in this category, the causative suffix -moH. This suffix indicates that the subject is causing the object to do something. If the verb to which it is added is transitive, the object becomes the indirect object. Many Klingon words are derived this way. For example, the verb clean is derived from the verb be clean.
Intransitive verb:
Transitive verb:

Type 5 (undefined subject; capability)

There are two unrelated suffixes in this group. The suffix -luʼ indicates an undefined subject. The verb prefixes that are normally used for first or second person subject with third person singular object are used to indicate first or second person object. The suffix indicates that the subject is capable of performing the action of the verb.
Examples:
This type indicates the speaker's opinion of the action of the verb. There are four suffixes.
This type indicates the verb's aspect. There are four Type 7 suffixes.
Note that aspect is different from tense and independent of it. A "completed" event can just as easily be set before, during, or after the time of description, or unspecified for tense. For simplicity, this section says "is completed", not "was, is, or will be completed."
The perfective aspect can also be indicated by the use of the verb form rIntaH after the main verb. This carries the connotation of irreversibility.

Type 8 (honorific)

There is only one suffix in this group, the honorific suffix -neS. It is used when addressing any type of superior, be it social, political, or military, and only when being very polite or having high regard for that person. It is never required.

Type 9 (syntactic)

Eleven suffixes specify syntactic roles in the sentence.
Nominalizers">Nominalization#With derivational morphology">Nominalizers
Two suffixes form specific types of noun from a verb.
These two suffixes inflect the verb in specific grammatical moods.
The following seven suffixes are used to form subordinate clauses. A subordinate clause may go after or before the clause it modifies.
Time
Cause and effect

This type of suffix is known as a lengwIʼ in Klingon, which is translated as rover. There are four rovers. These suffixes have no defined position, and can go after the verb stem or after any suffix – even another rover – except after a type-9 suffix or where the result would be meaningless. They modify whatever directly precedes them.
The position of the rover suffixes affects the meaning of the word. Contrast

Pronouns and copula

Klingon has no verb that corresponds to the verb to be; the concept is expressed using a different grammatical construction. Pronouns can be used as verbs that act as the pronoun plus the verb to be. The pronoun can take verb suffixes, which then modify the pronoun like any other verb. A third-person subject that is not a pronoun must go after the pronoun-verb and carry the type-5 noun suffix -ʼeʼ
Pronouns1st-person
singular		2nd-person
singular		3rd-person
singular		1st-person
plural		2nd-person
plural		3rd-person
plural
Capable of using languagejIHSoHghaHmaHtlhIHchaH
Not capable of using languagejIHSoHʼoHmaHtlhIHbIH

Examples:
Klingon does not have adjectives as a distinct part of speech. Instead, many intransitive verbs can be used as adjectives, in which case they follow the noun they modify.
Contrast
with
In this construction, the only verbal suffixes allowed are rover suffixes such as -quʼ and -Haʼ.
Type-5 noun suffixes that would normally be attached to the noun are instead attached to the adjectival verb:
; paʼDaq
; paʼ tInDaq

Adverbs

s are usually placed at the beginning of the sentence, but time adverbs go before other adverbs.
Adverbs can take the rover suffix -Haʼ to denote the opposite adverbial.
; Doʼ
; DoʼHaʼ

Conjunctions

Klingon has seven conjunctions, and they are different for nouns and for sentences. The noun conjunctions are je for a logical conjunction, joq for a logical disjunction and ghap for an exclusive disjunction. Noun conjunctions go after the nouns they connect. Sentence conjunctions are ʼej for a logical conjunction, qoj for a logical disjunction and pagh for an exclusive disjunction. ʼach but is used to contrast sentences.

Clauses

Relative clauses

In a relative clause, the verb has the type-9 verb suffix -bogh added to it. The order of the words in relative clauses remains the same as in regular clauses, but the head noun may optionally get the type-5 suffix -ʼeʼ added.
Since there is already a type-5 noun suffix marking the head noun, nothing other than the subject or the object can be marked as head noun. Two sentences are formed instead to form the same idea. Relative clauses can have nouns with type 5 suffixes as modifiers, but it can be ambiguous as they can be misinterpreted as being part of the main sentence.

Purpose clauses

A purpose clause expresses the reason or goal of the action of the main clause. If it is modifying a noun it states the purpose of the noun. A purpose clause always goes before the clause or noun it modifies. This is the cause of some grammatical ambiguity in Klingon, as a -meH modifying a noun at the beginning of a sentence can be misinterpreted as modifying the entire sentence. This can be resolved in writing with punctuation.
In this section, noun phrases are indicated by the abbreviation NP, and adjectives by A.
Klingon comparatives mainly rely on adjectives like lawʼ, puS, rap, and rur to contrast the nouns. However, many of the comparatives have unusual word orders that don't parse as regular Klingon sentences.
The general meaning of this construction is "NP1 is more A than NP2".
"NP1 has the most of quality A ".
"NP1 has the least of quality A".
"NP1 is A; he/she/it resembles NP2".

Questions

A yes–no question in Klingon can be formed by adding the suffix to the regular form. The word for yes is HISlaH or HIjaʼ and the word for no is ghobeʼ. Interrogative pronouns go where the answer would normally go, and don't reorder the sentence. Interrogative adverbs go at the beginning of the sentence.

Numbers

Klingon uses a base-10 system to count numbers. To form a multiple of 10, 100, 1 000, 1 000 000, the word for the multiple of ten is suffixed to the digit. For example. chorghmaH is a combination of the word chorgh eight and the number forming suffix ten.
Larger powers go before smaller powers: chorghmaH Soch is eight-ten seven. The number suffix is used to form ordinal numbers, and the number suffix indicates how many times an action has been repeated: loSDIch fourth, waʼmaH chaʼlogh twelve times.
0pagh5vagh
1waʼ6jav
2chaʼ7Soch
3wej8chorgh
4loS9Hut