tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 06 02:00:48 1995
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Gaps in known Klingon grammar?
- From: "A.Appleyard" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Gaps in known Klingon grammar?
- Date: Fri, 6 Jan 1995 10:00:06 GMT
- Priority: normal
As HolQeD 3.4 pp 3-6 (by Captain Krankor) says, revelations by Marc Okrand in
HolQeD 3.3 & 3.4 show that (a) a verb can't be used unmodified as a noun
except as authorized in the dictionary, (b) that (if `X` is a verb stem)
`X-ghach` can't be used as the plain infinitive of `X` except to produce a
new specific scientific or philisophical term (if I understood it correctly),
and thus a long list of common English constructions can't now be translated
into correct Klingon, even so much that on HolQeD 3.4 p5 Captain Krankor feels
himself driven as far as to directly challenge Marc Okrand to remedy the
matter. As Marc Okrand likely has other things to do than to carry the sole
labour of updating Klingon, is there a chance of us on tlhIngan-Hol getting
together to produce a `choHmey qechmey ghItlh` = "List of Ideas for
Alterations" that we could forward to him? This would include such patches to
fill gaps as:-
(1) A way to produce the simple infinitive of any verb.
(2) In `X Z law' Y Z puS` (X & Y are nouns, Z is (verb used as) adjective), =
"X is Z'er than Y", permission to omit or shorten the second occurence of a
long phrase used as Z.
(3) Ability e.g. to use `tlhej` = "accompany" as an adverb "together" or a
noun suffix "together with", by analogy of some other words that are also
used as suffixes. (E.g. once when I was writing a bit of Klingon, I needed a
word for "around" and found none, so I had no remedy except to venture to bend
the rules and use the noun for "orbit" as a noun suffix = "around".)
It will likely take us and Marc Okrand a long time to get the Klingon language
complete: e.g. after 50 years Tolkien was still altering bits of his Elvish
`Quenya` language and its supposed history.