tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jan 31 18:04:39 1995

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tlhIngan Hol qun

  Most languages have a history, and likely this includes Klingon. For example
{pu'} is recorded in the at first sight unconnected roles of (a) "phaser", (b)
plural of sentient nouns, (c) verb perfective suffix. What lies behind this in
the long unrecorded past of the Klingon language, back to when pre-industrial
Klingons had no idea of space or of space travel or even of guns and spoke a
language where the many suffixes of MK (= modern Klingon) were separate words
used in far freer order, their relative roles distinguished by case endings
which in MK have long since vanished as the millenia turned some form such as
AK (Ancient Klingon) *{puko-} into {pu'}, an animal-hide-clad tribe assembled
with spears for war or hunt into a uniformed squad armed with phasers? From
its original meaning of "{{whole}} assembled tribe" came, as military clipped
speech became a common affectation as part of a warrior culture and ate away
the ancient noun case and plural endings and verb conjugation endings:-
  (1) Use as verbal perfective suffix as the old verb endings were lost, by
affixation of originally separate *{puko-X} = "completely", where {X} is a
now-lost adverbial case ending acting like English "-ly".
  (2) Use as a whole-plural, e.g. *{beqopuko-} > {beqpu'} = "the crew, all the
crewmen together" as distinct from the ordinary plural *{beqomeikyo-} >
{beqmey} = "a number of crewmen, those crewmen", a distinction between {-pu'}
and {-mey} long retained until some time later {-pu'} (perhaps starting in
military usage to emphasize unity of action and purpose) intruded on the role
of {-mey} with sentient nouns and restricted it to "scattered all about".
  (3) Relationship with {pu'} = "phaser" is less likely; the word may have
been transferred from an older weapon (c.f. English "pistol" and "bayonet" <=
types of dagger) or fierce animal (c.f. E. "musket" originally meant "male
sparrowhawk"), or come from a codename or set of initials, or anything. It
might possibly even be the same word as *{puko-} = "complete group", as if the
man who invented it used as a codename for it a word which in that older use
was already then archaic (and now lost) to avoid confusion in usage (like E.
"Rapier" for a sort of missile, as the sword called a rapier is no longer a
common weapon). If so, this and other features of language evolution in
wordsused for technological objects point to the Klingons having had a long
history since they developed space and energy weapon technology
  This involves some assumptions about the history of Klingon phonology:-
  The final AK {-o-} for the lost inflection vowel should better so far be
written {-V-} = `some unspecified vowel'.
  The reconstructed AK forms here would have to be adapted according to any
systematic vowel shifts that may have happened with time.
  The guess that {k} > {'} as in Malayo-Polynesian languages (either only
non-initially as in Malayan, or also initially in Samoan) is based on the MK
pairs {'a'} = emphatic suffix / {'ach} = "but, however", {ja'} = "to report" /
{jach} = "to shout", {X-Di'} = "when X" / {N-Dich} = "Nth" as if AK *{dik-}
meant "occasion, time when". The {ch} members of these pairs may < {ky} as
often in Earth languages: if so, this points to a now lost suffix or family of
suffixes {-yV-}.
  The guessed AK diphthong in *{X-meikyV-} = "some X's" is pointed to by a
lack of a final {'} compared with {mi'} = "number" that it may be related to;
if an AK form *{mVkyV-} is involved here, a second `i'-type sound was likely
present to cause a dissimilation effect, as the MK words in {-y'} show that
{y} by itself would probably not have been able to suppress the glottal stop.
  AK {g}, the voiced homolog of {k}, may have changed to {j} as in Arabic,
causing the homophone pairs {'ej} = "and" and (only in some compound words)
"ship", {Daj} = "test inconclusively" and "to be interesting", {jaw} = "lord"
and "to chat", {jey} = "itinerary" and "to defeat", {jiH} = "I" and "monitor
screen, to monitor".
  The intrusion of whole-plural {-pu'} into general plural of sentient nouns
may be paralleled by {cha} = "torpedoes", a word which once perhaps meant
"volley of any sort of fired or thrown weapon" and in the space navy
specialized to mean "volley of torpedoes", later becoming the usual plural of
"photon torpedo". The MK that we have is spacemen's talk; we do not know
whether {cha} has replaced {pengmey} in other occupational variants such as
diver's Klingon where {peng} = "torpedo for a diver to ride on" (and "photon
torpedo" = some word such as {loghmay'peng} if the diver ever needs to mention
one).
  The pair {beH} = n. "rifle" and in {X-beH} = (of device) "be ready to X"
might point to a lost verb *{beH} = "be/get ready", as if {beH} = "rifle" <
*{beH-} (likely with some now-lost suffix) = "(weapon armed and) readied (for
action)", a usage that came in when invention of cartridges and magazines
meant that guns at last could be {{ready}} for action at all times instead of
the old laborious process of breech-loading.
  I see no connection in the use of {Du'} as a noun "farm" and also a plural
suffix for body parts. Likely {-Du'} < a disused word for "natural pair",
since body parts often occur in pairs: c.f. the intrusion in Russian of the
Common Slavonic dual {-a} into plural rather than vice versa in words for
things that come in pairs like body parts and the banks of a river.
  {A Q law' B Q puS} = "A is Q-er than B", whose stated literal meaning "A's
Q-ness is big, B's Q-ness is small" would be {law' A Q-ghach, puS B Q-ghach}
(HolQeD vol2 #2 p3), and the tendency for drinking toasts and other social
wishes to be in object-subject-verb order (HolQeD vol2 #4 pp4-7), seem to be
relics of a time of verb endings and distinct nominative and accusative noun
cases when word order could vary from object-verb-subject without ambiguity,
and of an old gerund / infinitive ending which vanished leaving the bare verb
stem as infinitive until {-ghach} became general in this role, leaving however
many individual bare verb stem infinitives, e.g. {miS} = "confusion" and "be
confused". Some noun and verb pairs are of different origin, e.g. in {yoD} =
n. and v. "shield" the noun has lost an instrument suffix, or the verb has
lost a verb-forming suffix. As to whether the example {ghar} rather than
{gharghach} = "diplomacy" (< {ghar} = "conduct diplomacy") can date this
change to after the beginning of modern-style diplomacy between orderly
nations on Qo'noS, I leave open.
  In {chach} = n. "emergency" and v. "be for emergency use", e.g. "emergency
breathing set" = {tlhuHwi' chach}, whereas I would have expected {chach
tlhuHwi'} = "emergency('s) breathing set", {tlhuHwi' chach} = "breathing set's
emergency" = "emergency with or needing a breathing set". Here the verb is
derived from the noun and has lost a verb-forming ending, as if the noun was
derived from the verb, the verb would likelier mean "for an emergency to
happen, to cause an emergency", with the noun as its gerund / infinitive.
Likely when Klingon industry and technology reached the stage of routinely
needing equipment and tools to be kept aside for use in emergencies, that
verb-forming ending was still pronounced, and "an X used for Y" was often
without risk of confusion "a Y-ic X" = *{X Y-yV-} or the like, which would
become {X Y}, whereas "a Y's X" = {Y X} nowadays. Most resulting "wrong way
round" compounds that would have come down to MK have by now been changed to
{Y X}; but if {Y} was {chach} the old word order persisted and the present
meaning of verb {chach} was extracted therefrom.
  Allan C. Wechsler (HolQeD vol1 #1) comments that {-w'} and {-y'} and {-rgh}
are unusual as the only allowed final consonant pairs; he says on p9 that
{rgh} may < {G} (a voiced form of {Q}), but on p10 leaves open the question of
w' and y'. If, as I have guessed, MK {'} < {k}, perhaps e.g. {chaw'} = "allow"
and {chay'} = "how?" < some forms such as *{kyakaw-} and *{kyakay-}. After
{ky} > {ch} stopped happening, the countertonic vowel dropped, as *{cha'w-}
and *{cha'y-}; {-Cw} and {-Cy} metathesized with glottal stop but reduced to
{-C} after other consonants when the ending vowels disappeared.
  In the pronoun table, the only connections that I can see are that (1) All
the free-standing personal pronouns end with {H}, and (2) {jiH} = "I" and
{maH} = "we" are the corresponding "and no object" prefixes + {H}; but this
does not hold in the other persons. I see no way to derive the MK personal
pronoun system from a simple set of separate subject and object pronouns;
perhaps it is a worn-down remnant of an ancient complicated Japanese-type
system of honorific words and self-deprecatory words plus some surviving older
pronouns; perhaps such words were taken for cultural reasons from some other
of the many languages that were likely spoken on Qo'noS in pre-industrial
times, as Japanese took cultural words from Chinese, and English from Latin.

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