[830] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Suggestions for Marc Okrand: homophones
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Wed May 12 22:04:55 1993
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: laibow@brick.purchase.edu (The Songbringer -- Marnen to the common fol
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 16:30:44 EDT
In-Reply-To: <MAILQUEUE-101.930512095112.448@fs1.metallurgy.umist.ac.uk>; from
A.APPLEYARD@fs1.mt.umist.ac.uk says:
:
: erich@bush.cs.tamu.edu (Erich Schneider) ('avrIn) wrote on Tue 11 May 93
: (Subject: additions to Klingon? (was Re: Two Exciting Announcemen):-
:
: > As a Klingon might paraphrase Descartes:
: > "jIQub vaj jIH." [= "I think therefore I am".]
:
: My analyser analyses this as:-
: jIQub ----- PP:I/- V:think
: vaj ----- N:warrior* | A:[so|then|thus|in_that_case]
: jIH ----- V:monitor* | P:[I|me] | N:viewing_screen
:
: Sometimes, as here, context would resolve one ambiguity but two ambiguities
: reinforce each other:-
: I think, therefore (I am | he monitors).
: I, (a|the) warrior, think.
: I think; he monitors the warrior.
: I, [who am the sentient computer built into] the warrior's viewing screen,
: think.
: (1) It is not clear that the isolated `jiH` is a whole clause and not one
: word in a longer clause. There should be a Klingon verb for "exist".
I must agree with you on this one.
: (2) I call a viewing screen `HaStajiH` = "visual_display viewing_screen" to
: distinguish from `jiH` = "I" = "the current speaker or writer". As Klingon
: pronouns decline exactly as nouns, ambiguity between homophonous nouns and
: pronouns is much more likely in Klingon than between English "I/eye/aye" or
: "you/ewe/yew". Also I am tempted to call a warrior not `vaj` but `may'vaj` =
: "battle warrior" to distinguish from the conjunction use of `vaj`. Best give
: Marc Okrand a floppy with my Klingon analyser on, so that he can see from its
: dictionary where all the homophones are, as (unlike in TKD) I have sorted all
: words and suffixes and prefixes, both original and addendum and tape, into on
e
: (ascii) alphabetical order.
This is reminiscent of the situation in Chinese where two characters meaning
the same thing often form a word to provide differentiation of sound. For
example, "pengyou" means "friend" (I can't remember the tones right now). Now
both characters involved have the basic meaning of "friend," but it's not
really possible to use either one of them alone as a word in Chinese (though it
is in Japanese, where longer words can be assigned to characters). There are
many characters pronounced "peng," and likewise many pronounced "you," but the
combination makes it practically unique, much like your use of "HaStajIH."
:
: (3) As was said before, an adverbial suffix is needed, like English "-ly".
And how!
:
: (4) In Klingon, if C = ' b ch D gh H j l m n ng p Q q r S t tlh v w y, and
V
: = a e I o u, possible root-syllables are CV CVC CVrgh CVw' CVy', 2625 in all.
: Of these 1370 are completely unused (type A), and 84 are not used alone but
: occur in longer words (ignoring personal and place names) (type B). These
: remaining free roots have to cater for all commonly-used so-far-unallocated
: root meanings in science and technology etc and should be allocated wisely.
: E.g. I mark `yiH` = "tribble" as a type B free root, as how often in ordinary
: life do people need to mention tribbles? Also, the Klingon that we have is th
e
: spaceman's variety, and what a spaceman uses a monosyllable for may have a
: longer name in other people's mouths: e.g. a spaceman says `peng` = "[photon]
: torpedo", but a diver may well say `peng` = "torpedo-shaped vehicle for a
: diver to ride astride", and say `loghmay'peng` or the like on the odd
: occasions when he does need to mention a space photon torpedo.
:
: (5) E.g. `baH` V = "fire a missile" used without object may refer to
: different weapons with different people, e.g. not "torpedoes" but "teargas
: grenades" when `baH` is used by riot-police on land.
:
I strongly agree with your point about allotting word-roots wisely, but how do
we know how often tlhInganpu' need to refer to tribbles? If you're trying to
create a tera'ngan tlhIngan Hol [?], do so by all means, but remember that
tlhIngan tlhIngan Hol was created to be the language of an alien civilization
that is radically different from ours and which we don't know all that much
about.
Later,
--
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