tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 22 19:27:06 1995
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Relative clause ambiguity
- From: [email protected] (Nick Legend Nicholas)
- Subject: Relative clause ambiguity
- Date: Thu, 23 Feb 1995 14:27:35 +1100 (EST)
charghwI' recently complained about the use of forms such as:
DujDaq vIqIpbogh vIlegh,
because they are ambiguous (between "I saw him in the ship that I hit", and
"I saw the ship in which I hit him").
About this time last year, I wrote a paper for inclusion in HolQeD addressing
this issue. As it turns out, human languages follow an acessibility
hierarchy for the heads of relative clauses. Any language that has relative
clauses will allow their heads to be the subjects of the clauses (eg.
"the child who saw me"). Fewer languages allow them as direct objects
(eg. "the child who I saw"). Even fewer allow indirect objects (eg.
"the child to whom I gave the phaser"). Even fewer allow possessors (eg.
"the child whose phaser I took"). And even fewer than that languages allow
comparatives (eg. "the child who I am bigger than.")
My guess was that Klingon allowed subject and direct object heads, and that's
it. As a result, there is *no* way in Klingon of saying "whose" --- and,
surprisingly, noone here seems to have missed that word. Similarly, there
should be no way of saying "in which", so that reading of the relative
clause would be ruled out.
My guesses seem to have been borne out (at the least, not disconfirmed)
by usage on the list, by Krankor's
verdicts, and, latest of all, by Okrandian canon. True, it's my opinion
and guesswork, and the prudent thing is to await Okrand's OK. I'll allow
myself the immodesty, though, of saying that if this *isn't* how relative
clause heads work in Klingon, Okrand has a *lot* of fast talking to do:
this really is the way an outsider linguist, on the basis of the data we
have to date (inlcuding Okrand's DS9 cards), would expect Klingon to
behave, and any alternative would probably be exceedingly messy.
--
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* Nick Nicholas, Linguistics, University of Melbourne, Australia *
[email protected] & [email protected]
* "Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the *
circumscriptional appelations are excised." --- W. Mann & S. Thompson,
* _Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organisation_, 1987. *
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