tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 06 15:04:23 1995
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Gaps in known Klingon gramma
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: Gaps in known Klingon gramma
- Date: Fri, 6 Jan 1995 18:03:59 -0500
>Subject: Gaps in known Klingon grammar?
>Date: 95-01-06 05:44:34 EST
>From: [email protected] (A.Appleyard)
[...]
>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:-
va, yIHoj.
>(1) A way to produce the simple infinitive of any verb.
I doubt that Klingon's lack of a simple infinitive diminishes its
expressiveness, because we do have {-meH}, {'e'}, and {net}, among other
things. I don't believe that any use of the infinitive in English is
unexpressable in Klingon grammar, despite that fact that no one-to-one
correspondence between the two exists.
>(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.
This would serve only purposes of brevity. It has become the consitent norm
to use all the elements of the comparative, as far as I've been able to
determine.
>(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".)
I see nothing wrong with using {tlhej} as a verb with a subordinating suffix.
It need not exactly correspond to English structure. Recasting is a more
acceptable alternative.
>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.
Okrand has no real time nor interest for developing the language. Altho
Klingon is by no means "complete", it is a good deal more expressive than
many people make it out to be. Part of the fun of using Klingon is accepting
the challenging of expressing your thoughts with the what we've been given
already, rather than devising new grammar and vocab. Mutual intellgibility is
much more important than expanding the language to do nothing more than
accomodate English-speakers. Of course there's many things the vocab doesn't
express. But there's many more words that we don't commonly use.
This is not a flame. It's good you're back, Appleyard. It's been a while.
Essentially, we shouldn't worry ourselves so much about making Klingon bigger
before we deal with it as it is.
yapHa''a' tlhIngan Hol pab mu'tay' joq? net SovmeH, tlhIngan Hol tlhol'e'
wIlo'nISqu'. maqeqmeH 'ej mapo'meH, mIwvam potlh law', Hoch potlh puS.
ghuy'Do