[86698] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Ditransitive reflexives
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Trimboli)
Tue Oct 27 14:14:25 2009
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:10:27 -0400
From: David Trimboli <david@trimboli.name>
In-reply-to: <6038b7230910270736q49ded0a1ob48e2c0e766d47ef@mail.gmail.com>
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
André Müller wrote:
> 2009/10/27 Tracy Canfield <toastrix@gmail.com>
>> Thanks! I appreciate the information. The lack of anaphora
>> (pronouns like "themselves" or "each other") in Klingon is
>> especially striking because the linguistic structures which control
>> where they can appear in human languages are part of universal
>> grammar, which is generally agreed to be hardwired in the brain.
>> At the very least, it raises interesting questions for further
>> research on government and binding in Klingon.
>>
> Don't forget that not every linguist believes in UG and even among
> those who do, it's a matter of debate what's included there. So,
> "generally agreed" is quite an exaggeration. And Klingon wouldn't be
> the first language to violate the proposed UG. There are even natural
> languages that do... But it's getting rather off-topic going into
> details here (and I fully agree on your last sentence about G&B).
Klingon was designed very intentionally to violate universal
grammar—since Klingons are not Terrans. Note, for example, {SuD} "be
blue, green, yellow" and {Doq} "be red, orange," which violate the
"warm/cold" dichotomy of color in natural language. And consider the
very phonology of Klingon, which exists in a way that no natural Earth
language would.
--
SuStel
tlhIngan Hol MUSH
http://trimboli.name/mush
