tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Aug 26 12:08:34 1996
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Re: An offer you shouldn't refuse!
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>Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 19:46:48 -0700
>From: "Kenneth Traft" <[email protected]>
I really *will* try to answer only (or mostly) those points that are
directly language related. Really I will.
The above is a wonderful paragraph, really a deadly weapon. Unfortunately
it's a weapon pointed directly at its holder. I know I'll blow it and have
the exception and the above paragraph quoted back at me juxtaposed, but
that's life.
>----------
>From: [email protected] on behalf of William H. Martin
>Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 1996 9:57 PM
>To: Multiple recipients of list
>Subject: Re: RE: RE: An offer you shouldn't refuse!
>>These are not the words he published for these relatives.
>>Perhaps he rethought his earlier fabrications and has
>>subsequently published these far more reasonable terms. The
>>terms I saw were new combinations in the style of SoSnI'
>>and its ilk.
>My HolQeD's start at 3.1. I spoke with him on these and he said they are
>suggestions, but he doesn't seem to be teaching them to his students. But
Ah... There is some difficulty there; that would explain much, since you
were defending attacks against things you never knew Glen did. I supposed
folks should be more careful making sure people know what's being referred
to.
Still, I've heard he *does* have these words listed in his dictionary, and
that is how you teach to students, isn't it?
>Alan Anderson responded on
>Wednesday, August 21, 1996 11:37 PM:
>>>In Glen's article "Extending Klingon Kinship Terms" in HolQeD 2:3, he
>>>proposed using the particle {-nI'} as a generic "kinship" suffix. It
>>>was actually put a bit more strongly than a mere proposal:
> >>"{puqnI'} is clearly *grandchild*..."
>>>I'm sorry, but it's far from clear to *me* that this is the case. He
>>>also said that {vavnI''a'} is "the only possible choice" to translate
>>>"great grandfather", and {loDnI''a'} could be "cousin" -- wejpuH.
>>>The entire article is based on the presumption that we can deduce the
>>>word formation rules by analyzing a *very* few examples (four, in this
>>>case), and generalizing to create new vocabulary. I disagree strongly
>>>with this position.
>Actually I think the "grand child" angle is quite good (that cousin part is
>another matter though). On this list I've argued for (and been "chastened"
>for) taking such liberties myself. I believe that, even though the TKD only
>gives a few examples, it invites us to make use of the language:
> "It is not possible, in a brief guide such as this, to describe the
>grammar of
> Klingon completely. What follows is only a sketch or outline of Klingon
>grammar.
> Although a good many of the fine points are not covered, the sketch will
>allow the
> student of Klingon to figure out what a Klingon is saying and to respond in
>an
> intelligible, though somewhat brutish, manner. Most Klingons will never
>know the
> difference."
> Page 18 of The Klingon Dictionary.
I don't buy it. English uses the prefix "to-" with nouns of time to mean
"this." We have "today", "tonight", "tomorrow", etc. So that means that
"toThursday" and "to-afternoon" and "to-evening" must be correct as well?
Not hardly. The -nI' suffix occurs four times with kinship terms in
Klingon; the to- prefix three times with nouns of time in English. Is the
cutoff then three vs. four? More likely it's simply that you can't presume
on limited examples that a given feature is productive. It happens in many
languages that certain constructions form some limited number of
seemingly-related words, but are not productive in general. In English,
words that start with "gl-" seem to be related: glint, glimmer, glow,
glisten, glister, glamour, glory, glaze... does that mean I can know that
any word I choose to invent starting with gl- must be a word with a related
meaning? Or more realistically, that any word I come across starting with
gl- has to deal with sparkling or light-emission? Glean? Glib? Glue?
The same might be said for sn- and sniffle, snore, sneeze, snot, sniff,
sneer, snarl, and snout... and snow and snare. I think it is not
responsible to decide on unattested words based on such a pitiful handful
of examples. We even know that Klingon is affected by similar limited
effects, with the four or five toasts we have with non-standard
word-order. We know that they're not generalizable, Okrand says so. So
why assume that other things not known to be productive are?
Your quote of page 18 looks to me like nothing more than saying "Well,
Okrand said he's not telling us everything, so that means anything we make
up must be right. After all, it's just something he didn't tell us."
That's not how I interpret it. If I did, then there would be no reason for
any grammar or vocabulary for Klingon (or Grammarians), since anything
anyone said would be correct. I (and presumably the KLI) try to take a
conservative approach, that Klingon is a language of its own, not subject
to the whims of anyone but its creator. It's not for us, without access to
Maltz, to decide that since Klingon has no word for umbrella, we should
invent a new root for it (no, I'm not going to make THAT mistake again.
Last time I gave an example in a similar sentence, Okrand decided it was
right. But note that it wasn't right UNTIL he so decided). If everyone
made up his own dialect, with its own rules according to his own whims, we
could hardly lay claim to speaking the same language, which all speakers
would understand. There's nothing wrong with inventing your own language,
but don't invent someone else's, especially when there are other people
learning it.
Yes, I have made some interpretations of Okrand's rules that have turned
out to be wrong, and yes, everyone has made extensions to the language,
knowingly or unknowingly. But at the very least we should recognize them
for what they are, if only in retrospect, and not hide behind some elastic
clause in TKD which says that we can't possibly be wrong! QaghmeylIj
tIchID! yIyoH! Otherwise its pointless even to discuss the language,
since there is no language to discuss, only the whims of people whose only
relationship is that the languages they all study purport to have the same
name. Otherwise any pretence of academic scholarship is nothing more than
the lamest of jokes.
There are things we don't know about Klingon, but it's just as likely that
one of them is an independent root for "grandfather" as anything else.
>Alan Anderson also wrote on Wednesday, August 21, 1996 11:37 PM:
>>>It's perhaps worse because the "new vocabulary" proposed is completely
>>>unnecessary.
>Glen isn't the only one who can be dogmatic (as I've seen over and over again
>on this list). Trying to constantly "explain" Terran words with "phrases"
>gets really tedious and verbose. If a Klingon sees a common word with a
>suffix such as <-nI'> behind it, a commonality to the word he knows should
>seem make sense. VERBOSE doesn't seem to be the Klingon way as we can see
>with the use of Clipped Klingon in everyday use, not just in Military
>situations. Even using <-ghach> on a bare stem is not "forbidden" just
>"marked". I really question the validity of the strictness placed on Klingon
>speakers. I love the intellectual banter and I'm learning much, but I'm
>afraid I'll never make the KLI grades.
Erm, you're confusing what English does with what people do. Many
languages have very very very very common everyday constructions which
sound incredibly verbose to English-accustomed ears... and they manage
quite fine. That doesn't mean Klingon MUST, but the fact that they do
means Klingon need not follow the English schema either. Translating
English sentences into Klingon and forcing the Klingon to follow English
norms seems to ME tedious and verbose. "Hab SoSlI' Quch" is a fine
phrasing, clear and concise... and wildly non-English (What, no "ghaj"?).
And Okrand himself says that these verbose phrases are how Klingons do
things (cf. HolQeD something-or-other; I need to get my library here, where
he says that you use tlhejtaHvIS for "with" of accompaniment, giving an
example whose English literal translation is horribly verbose. It's a good
thing we're not speaking English. Or "matay'DI' vIHtaHbogh bIQ rur
mu'qaDmey." Why not use jojmajDaq and so on, for the more "obvious" and
"concise" translation of "Between us, curses flow like water" instead of
"When we are together, curses resemble moving water"? Because nobody ever
said conciseness and resemblence to English's idea of conciseness were
desiderata.)
>I like Alan Anderson's response (Re: RE: An offer you shouldn't refuse!) on
>Wednesday, August 21, 1996 12:30 PM. I won't restate it here though.
>>The article Glen wrote had an introductory half
>>which insightfully noted that {-ghach} should not be used
>>on verbs without suffixes. He then turned up the heat in
>>the second half of the article where he openly proposed
>>that we should feel free to use any verb we want as a noun
>>any time we want.
>Perhaps this is a little BOLD, but it seems that in the Adendum we got more
>"verbs as nouns" and other later works. I would defer this to page 18 of the
>TKD as well.
And my answer remains the same. I refer also to page 176, where we are
explicitly and pointedly NOT granted permission to use bare verb-roots as
nouns, in the sentence "It is not known if all verbs can be used as
nouns...." If you tell me "well, if it's not known they can, then it's not
known they can't, and so I will," you're rewriting the language and missing
the point. That gets back to what I said above: "It's MY language and I'll
invent it as I please." It isn't. Not the Klingon I am studying. You are
welcome to study one of your own devising, but as a courtesy don't confuse
people by saying it's the same one Okrand is talking about.
>Ken wrote:
>>> His contention was
>>> always that <-ghach> was equatible to "-tion" or "-ness" only. This always
>>> the way Glen explained it to me and used it when we talked about it after
>>> Captain Krankor's article came out in HolQeD.
>William H. Martin also wrote:
>>This is completely inaccurate. His argument was that since
>>you could use any verb as a noun any time you wanted,
>>unless it had a verb suffix on it, you had to have {-ghach}
>f>or those times when a verb had a verbal suffix. The rest
>>of the time, just use the verb as a noun.
>I'm sorry, I need to be sure I understand. I am talking about the use of
><-ghach> as <-tion / -ness> that makes a "noun". I'll try and find the
>article, because I'm not sure what your arguing.
I think you two are talking cross-purposes here. Will is referring to
Glen's use of bare verb-roots as nouns, and Ken is talking about Glen's
interpretations of the meaning of -ghach. Will's point I mentioned above,
and I don't really know about the other point, nor do I feel I really know
the details of what Okrand has said about -ghach's interpretations, so I
can't speak to it. But it sounds like you two have something meaningful to
discuss, once you get together on what you're discussing.
>William H. Martin also wrote:
>>While Okrand can do this, the rest of us can't, unless he
>>does it first for each verb. I personally like it better
>>the less often this happens because having the same word
>>work either as a noun or verb makes it easier to translate
>>into Klingon and much harder to understand the resulting
>>text.
>Yes, but it just seems soooooooo KLINGON!
>William H. Martin also wrote:
>>That has been my argument with Glen all along. Every single
>>interpretation I've seen come from him has the single
>>priority of making it easier to translate English sentences
>>into Klingon.
>I'm really not being sarcastic, but it just seems soooooooo KLINGON!
These aren't meaningful points about how Klingon should or shouldn't be or
why. When I talked to Glen, when he made a point I didn't agree with, he
would give me his reasons (which maybe I accepted and maybe I didn't), and
I'd give him mine. He had at least some sort of logic behind what he was
doing, (and even then it was rarely if ever the logic of convenience,
though it might seem so from the result). These statements have stopped
being "it should be right, it makes sense because of this and that and the
other thing"; they are now "it's right, it makes sense because Glen said
so." If we're going to pretend to be studying the language, as linguists
and not as dilletantes or Paramount scriptwriters, flipping through the
dictionary and doing global replacements of English words with Klingon
ones, we're going to have to have better reasoning than that. This may be
a point of difference between the ILS and the KLI, as to how we choose to
view our studies (though probably not to the extremes I just said).
>William H. Martin also wrote:
>>He never shows any concern for making the
>>resulting Klingon sentences clearer or more meaningful.
>>When you have one as the priority, the other suffers, and
>>Glen and I stand on opposite sides of these two values.
>I would argure that you are justified in your stand and I would not want to
>try and make you any different. But there is the basic differences and when
>it becomes a fundamental difference it will stay that way. In this case there
>is a man (Dr. Okrand) who can make both sides look bad by any decision he
>makes. That's what makes this different than other types of fundamentally
>diverse positions. From what I've seen come from the "Good Doctor", I'd much
>rather take Glen's approach.
I don't completely follow this. Are you saying, then, that since Marc
Okrand can control the language and thus disagree with anything anyone
says, we should wrest it from him and make our own versions? I have
already talked about that above. And if so, then what is Glen's approach?
That we should follow *his* perceptions only? Surely you don't think that
everything Glen says is objectively correct and obvious to all, any more
than some of Okrand's less popular rulings. In which case we'll have
traded one arbitrary arbiter for another. I'd rather stick with the one
who had the job first.
>William H. Martin also wrote:
>>And it pisses me off because I care about the quality of
>>the finished works. If something is a year or two late, I
>>don't care. I just want the finished work to be something
>>someone can read and richly appreciate. Not hero worship.
>>Art. Craft.
>I want to see more stuff and while I was impressed with the KLI Hamlet it
>wasn't perfect and too "artsy" oriented for me. I really don't think it
>warrented that extra two years. I'll never be a great Klingon speaker (I'll
>be happy with being fair). I just don't have that kind or time or aptitude
>(or inclination).
Well, that's neither here nor there; there really isn't an objective way to
discuss this.
>I think that Glen's actions in the past were somewhat questionable, but he is
>not malicious. Inept at time over protocal, organization, and manners, but
>not intentionally bad. I did not agree with a few (very few) points of his
>critique of the KLI Hamlet, but the points he brought up on "readibility" are
>valid, despite the focus of the iambic pentameter (which seems strange since
>Klingon is based on "3").
It should be noted that I found Glen's Hamlet "strange" in some aspects as
well (he used a lot more pronouns than I would, strangely. This indicates
nothing whatsoever, just an interesting point in comparative dialects).
Terran counting is based on 10, and we have 14-line sonnets, 7-5-7 haiku,
etc etc. FAR too much is made of the supposed Klingon focus on threes. It
may have been the base of their ancient counting system, but it didn't have
to be their consuming obsession.
It's hard to say what "readability" is; it's also hard to answer without
knowing specifics of what the critique was.
Hmmm... Well, depending on the breadth of the interpretation granted by
the reader, I've violated my stated directive anywhere from "noticeably" to
"egregiously." Still, at least a fair number of my comments should be
viewed as dealing with the language, how it develops, and some of the
problems I see in studying it.
~mark, speaking for himself
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