[87332] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Double negatives
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (ghunchu'wI' 'utlh)
Mon Nov 30 17:40:47 2009
In-Reply-To: <a1173fff0911301352tbfdbb8fh6d8d969d257edd74@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:38:39 -0500
From: "ghunchu'wI' 'utlh" <qunchuy@alcaco.net>
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Christopher Doty <suomichris@gmail.com> wrote:
> Negative evidence isn't evidence. If a Klingon speaker did say this,
> that doesn't mean (based on what we know) that they are wrong; it only
> means they've said something that isn't shown to occur in the
> materials we have, but which isn't forbidden.
qIt Hoch wIleghbe'bogh 'e' wIwuqqangchugh, chenbej chatlh taQ. That
way lies chaos. Since one of the tenets of this group is that we don't
invent Klingon grammar, I object to proposals for which there is an
abundant lack :) of evidence.
My answer to Blake should be uncontroversial: Klingon as we see it
used does not "do" double negatives. Whether or not it might be able
to in some hypothetical dialect is unimportant to the fact that it
*doesn't* in the dialect we study.
-- ghunchu'wI'
