[246] in tlhIngan-Hol
The Grammarian Responds
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Thu Mar 26 01:44:58 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: krankor@IMA.ISC.COM (Captain Krankor)
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 92 05:43:19 -0500
Well, let's see if I can respond to all the stuff that's been thrown
my way recently.
First, as a backdrop, let me just say, regarding me being "taken to
task":
Frankly, I'm delighted. I'm happy that people are paying enough
attention and being interested enough to check me. While I think
I'm on solid ground in the current things, I will, like anyone else,
make the occasional mistake, and am happy to be corrected when I do.
Moreover, if you think I've erred, and I think I haven't it means
that either I've explained something badly, or failed to explain it,
or we have an interesting divergence of view, worthy of discussion,
or something. So in short, yes, if you don't see where I'm coming
from, don't hesitate to speak up. If you don't understand what's
going on, there's probably lots of others who feel the same way.
[That, by the way, should be a rule of life, not just of this group]
Note, though, that I explicitly do not attempt to correct *every*
mistake that every poster makes; this would be too great and too
tedious a task, both for me to write up and for you (tlhIH) to read.
My goal is to try to identify mistakes-of-misunderstanding rather
than slip-ups or typos. For the most part.
So, that said, let's dive into it!
I. -ghach
I'm in part to blame for the confusion about -ghach, because I've
unofficially adopted a paradigm for its use, without bothering to
explain it to anyone (I think). I've hesitated because it is such a
murky area, but I guess we really need to formalize what we're doing
with it, so I shall elaborate it here.
The section on -ghach (p. 176) creates almost as many problems as it
solves. The two problems, succinctly, are: 1) can -ghach be used on
simple (one-syllable) verbs or not? and 2) just which simple verbs
have noun-counterparts and which don't?
The answer to 1) is fairly easy to construct: Nowhere does it say
that you *can't* use -ghach on simple nouns-- if you
out-and-out-can't, one would really expect it would say so in this
section. Extrapolating from our whole knowledge-base of the overall
language, my reading would be that A) You *can* use it like that,
but B) such use may well be redundant. The extent to which it is
redundant will hinge largely on how we answer 2):
2) is the tougher one. Just which simple verbs can we use as their
"noun equivalent"? We don't know, and the book isn't very helpful.
But the implication clearly seems to be: "more-than-just-those-that-
already-have-dual-listings-in-the-dict".
As it happens, I spoke to Mr. Okrand about this very issue, before
the new dict came out. He said pretty much the same thing as is in
this section, but he seemed to imply a bit more strongly that
you-can-kind-of-sort-of-assume that you can derive a noun from a
simple verb. Part of the way this was implied was by the contrast
shown in the way he was *most* explicit, nay, vehement, that you can't
go the other way: you can't presume a verb from a noun.
But the lurking notion remains: we *appear* to be able to derive
such nouns, but have not been given explicit license to do so in all
cases. So what do we do?
Well, first off, let's notice that the lurking doubt implies that
there may well be *some* simple verbs that we cannot directly derive
a noun from. For those verbs (whichever they may be), it would seem
particularly clear that they *could* take -ghach, even though they
are simple. In fact, they'd have to, if you want to nominalize it;
I don't think the intention was to exclude them from
nominalizability entirely. This helps with our redundancy issue
above: such use of -ghach on a simple verb would clearly not be
redundant.
So we are now reduced to guessing, but if we err on the side of
go-ahead-and-put-in-the-ghach, at worst we are redundant, whereas if
we err in terms of leaving it out, we risk being out-and-out wrong.
These are the grammatic issues. But there are (possibly) even more
compelling practical issues to consider. Namely, if one presumes
the noun form of a simple verb in one's posting, will people
understand what one is saying? After all, you are now talking about
using a word that is derived, and not directly look-up-able in the
dict.
So here is the strategy I've settled on:
1) Use common sense to determine if it seems like there would be an
obvious noun-meaning of a given simple verb. For some verbs, like "to
question", it seems pretty clear that the related noun would be "a
question". On the other hand, some verbs are less clear: what
would be the derived noun for "to raise" or "to be finished"? You
might come up with one, but these seem far less obvious. Then,
there are cases where perhaps more than one noun meaning might come
to mind (I can't think of one now, but I do remember stumbling upon
one once). In short, if you don't see *one* obvious noun meaning,
assume you need -ghach.
2) If you still think you don't need -ghach grammatically, apply the
next rule to see if maybe you want it pragmatically. And that is
this: will it be obvious to the reader that you are using this verb
as a noun? My rule of thumb is: if I'm already putting noun
suffixes on it, it's clear I'm using it as a noun. If I'm using it
naked, without any suffixes, put -ghach on it anyway, just to be
clear what I mean. Perhaps to a real tlhIngan this would be
redundant, but it certainly will *not* be redundant to us Earthbound
folx who currently have to guess about which verbs we can derive
nouns from.
In short: when in doubt, use -ghach.
Phew! I hope all that made sense!
II. -law'
We had two sentences using -law' be questioned.
1) tlhInganpu'vaD mIghlaw' nuq?
Those with a keen memory will remember that I myself was the
original author of this sentence. I feel that the objections raised
are based on misinterpretation of the meaning. The question raised,
basically, is who's subjective assessment are we talking about, and
it is concluded that-of-the-tlhInganpu'. No, not so. In this case,
the -law' *does* indicate uncertainty on the part of the speaker,
but, moreover, indicates assumed uncertainty on the part of the
listener/reader *because this is a question*. Following the
guidelines for questions, nuq is really a placeholder for the
question's answer; thus, when I ask a question like this, it implies
that I expect the answer, semantically at least, to be of the form:
tlhInganpu'vaD mIghlaw' <something>
In other words, the intent of the law' was to indicate that I was
soliciting opinions, not factual statements. I rather like it
because it is one of those wonderful things that makes sense in
Klingon, but doesn't translate one-for-one into English. Some
translations might be:
What does it appear is evil to Klingons? What is seemingly evil to
Klingons? What do we think (do you think, does one think) is evil
to Klingons? What is thought to be evil to Klingons?
See? It's a concept, not a word-for-word translation. Note that NOT
a valid translation would be: "What do Klingons think is evil?",
which is how the objector took it. The point is that we are not
Klingons, we don't definitively *know* the answer, the whole point
is to discuss it. The uncertainty is meant to be on us, the
discussion group. So a closer-to-the-mark translation, in that
form, would be "What do Klingons *seem to* think is evil?" (emphasis
added).
I think my sentence is a wholly defensible use of -law'.
2) mungeDlaw'
The objection raised here seems to be directed more at the use of
the mu- prefix than at the -law' suffix. But again, I think
mungeDlaw' for "it seems easy to me" is entirely correct usage.
Basically, the objection hinges on the notion of transitive vs.
intransitive verbs in Klingon, and on strict distinction between
direct and indirect objects. As I have posted in the past, Klingon
simply does not have this distinction, section 6.8 notwithstanding.
There is some evidence of differentiation, but it is not rigid, so
while jIHvaD ngeDlaw' would be just dandy, mungeDlaw' is fine. This
is very like Doch HInob for "give me the thing", instead of
jIHvaD Doch yInob, which I've discussed in the past. Either is
acceptible.
III. leSHey DochvamDaq jIghItlhtaH.
We had two objections to this sentence, one to jIghItlhtaH and one
to leSHey. The original poster has already defended his use of
jIghItlhtaH, and I completely agree with his take on it, with -taH
being a pseudo-clue to futureness. Note that this is quite similar
to everyone's favourite sentence: batlh Daqawlu'taH, where only -taH
and context (and the English subtitle on the screen) give us any
clue at all to futureness. I agree with the objector that -qa'
might be appropriate (as did the original poster in his response),
probably superior, but I don't think the original is wrong. Basically,
I read it in the Klingon and it made complete sense to me, so I
didn't flag it.
The second objection was to the use of leSHey, and with this objection
I completely agree. I did not give a detailed objection at the
time, but simply noted that I found it confusing (the objector
clarifies well why this is so) and suggested tugh as an alternative.
leS puS is now offered as another alternative, and an interesting
one at that. At the time I had considered and rejected it, but
I have just re-checked the definition of puS and found my objections
unfounded, so yes, I think leS puS to be an excellent solution. I
would probably stick a -Daq on it (ignoring, for the moment, the
issues surrounding non-spatial uses of -Daq) to give that
prepositional/adverbial/locative kind of feel to it, and end up with:
leS puSDaq DochvamDaq jIghItlhqa'taH.
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You know, I never *intend* for these postings to end up as long as
they do...
From the Grammarian's Desk,
--Krankor
P.S. I also never intend for them to take as long to do as they do.
I can't believe it's already light out!
