[1436] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: relative clauses (more)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon Aug 23 21:31:49 1993
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy)
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1993 09:18:28 +1000 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <9308231525.AA20555@startide.ctr.columbia.edu> from "shoulson@ctr.
columbia.edu" at Aug 23, 93 11:25:31 am
>
Yes, come to think of it, 'e' seems a natural way out. Klingon "bogh"
reminded me strongly of Classical Chinese suo3, which is used before
the verb of a relative clause, or of the ... frowning? brow-knitting?
used in ASL on all the signs of a relative clause. Except that there
was no obvious way to break ambiguous cases. I also had thought that
perhaps there *WAS* no way of disambiguating, just as you need
circumlocutions in Lisu to make clear which is the object and which
the subject. Why should everything be unambiguous, after all?
Mark Shoulson:
>
> "the torpedo with which we destroyed the spaceship"
>
> What about "Duj wIQaw'meH peng wIlo'bogh"? Doesn't require postulating an
> iunstrumental or anything. The torpedo which we used in order to destroy
> the spaceship.
>
>
But that can also be "we who used a torpedo to destroy the spaceship",
doesn't it? Further, meH indicating purpose, it seems to me that that
sentence either implies that we missed, or does not make the outcome
clear. How about "we fired a torpedo, it destroyed the spaceship" or
something of the kind? But in that case, when turning that into a
relative clause, where does bogh go? Fire, destroy, both? Or perhaps
again: Duj Qaw'pu'bogh pengmaj['e'] (our torpedo which destroyed the
ship). Suits me better, because I got a feeling that Klingon is
supposed to be lapidary, Tacitus-style.
Now for a last piece of (perhaps heretical) thought: ambiguity does
not really bother me. I can live with "yaS qIppu'bogh puq". It even
makes things interesting! Come to think of it, is there an ambiguity
there, or just an artifact of our way of thinking? Consider:
the child who hit the officer, the officer whom the child hit.
It all boils down to the same, doesn't it? A child hit an officer,
period. Whether, next, we decide to ramble on about the child, or
the officer, doesn't change anything to the fact that "a child hit
an officer". So, isn't the ambiguity that we perceive in "yaS
qIppu'bogh puq vIlegh" in fact an artifact of our relative-clause
straight jacket? I know, after all, quite a few languages which have
nothing like our relative clauses.
More heretical tought to conclude (am I turning into a thloqo'?):
why not accept that Klingon is not like English, and do away with
'e' for disambiguation purposes? All the more so that 'e', taking
the same slot as vo', mo', etc. we're still in the poo when we
want to translate "the room from which..., the reason for which...,
etc."
(Don't pay too much attention to those ramblings. They're only
my morning brain-stretching exercises)
