[241] in tlhIngan-Hol
Grammarian: what about all this <-law'>ing?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon Mar 23 19:06:15 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: Allan C. Wechsler <ACW@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1992 17:37-0500
In-Reply-To: <9202270900.AA09874@ima.ima.isc.com>
[Second in a series of postings long-delayed by network nonsense.]
Recently there has been a spate of usage of <-law'> "seemingly,
apparently" that struck me as questionable, so I'm questioning it and
hoping for a judgement call from the Grammarian.
According to TKD, <-law'> is one of a group of suffixes which tell how
certain the /speaker/ is about the statement she is making. In other
words, if S is a sentence without <-law'>, then adding <-law'> changes
the meaning to "It seems to me that S."
TKD does not, to my knowledge, provide any mechanism for shifting the
implied subjective judgement onto the shoulders of anyone other than the
speaker.
This brings me to the phrasing of the question, <tlhInganpu'vaD mIghlaw'
nuq?>, which the Grammarian has allowed to pass several times without
comment. The intended meaning is clearly, "What do Klingons regard as
evil?" Notice that the subjective judgement is intended to be placed on
the "indirect object". But I don't see how TKD allows this question to
mean /anything/ other than the somewhat flaky "What does it seem to me
appears evil to Klingons?" Notice that this sentence is close to being
ungrammatical in English -- it might well be ungrammatical in Klingon
too. Even if it is grammatical, the only possible answer would be
(IMHO, beggin'-neS yer pardon, pabpo') "How the hell would I know what
you think is evil to Klingons?"
Another recent questionable example of <-law'> was Mr. Everson's
<mungeDlaw'>, with the intended meaning "it seems easy to me".
Shouldn't this have been just <ngeDlaw'> "it is apparently easy". I
thought the adjectivals were all intransitive verbs; the suffix <-moH>
certainly changes intransitives to transitives, but there was no hint in
TKD (that I could see) that <-law'> performed similar magic. In which
case it's using a transitive pronominal prefix with an intransitive
verb, and ought to be Right Out.
In summary, I suspect people have been reading <V-law'> as meaning
"Subject seems to object to V"; I (politely) suggest that this reading
may be incorrect.
