tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Feb 12 13:59:10 1996
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Re: KLBC Preguntas
>Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 22:38:28 -0800
>From: [email protected]
>In a message dated 96-02-08 17:40:25 EST, you write:
>>The fact is, Okrand has not told us how to express fractions,
>>beyond {bID}, except as percent. One tenth would be
>>{wa'maHvatlhvI'}. Five and three tenths would be {vagh
>>wejvatlhvI'}.
>>
>>> david
>>
>>charghwI'
>Meanwhile, I have had ideas on how to express fractions. No of them appear
>in canon, so BEWARE. This is not an endorsement to use these ideas, only a
>contribution to the brainstorming.
Yes, it's been proposed before. I oppose using such constructions without
hearing from Okrand, for reasons I'll get into.
>maHvI' = tenths
>'uy'vI' = millionths
>Get the trend here?
>wejvI' = thirds
>loSvI' = fourths
>et cetra
Note that these two sets of examples are not quite the same. "*wejvI'" is
adding the putative suffix "*-vI'" to a *number*. But "*maHvI'" (and
"vatlhvI'" for that matter) are using the bare number-forming elements,
which otherwise do not occur alone. If "*wejvI'" were "third", I would
expect "tenth" to be "*wa'maHvI'" and "percent" to be "*wa'vatlhvI'". But
we know that "percent" is "vatlhvI'", so while "*maHvI'" may be an option,
I'm not sure how supportive it is of "*wejvI'".
>vI' = accumulates
>A number + vI' means that there has been so much accumulation of that
>gradation.
The meaning really doesn't work for me... if vI' does indicate fractions, I
don't really see it as following from this derivation. After all, you
"accumulate" whole items too, and that's more intuitive than accumulating
fractions. This derivation doesn't really answer where the
"fractionalness" of the whole thing comes. It explains how you can
indicates multiples of the fraction, but we already knew that.
(hmm... "vI'" = sharpshooting. Maybe number+vI' indicates that a
sharpshooter can hit the target the specified fraction of the time.)
Hmm... then again... perhaps there once was a sort of noun-noun
construction for numbers, for numerators and denominators... and -vI' wound
up being tacked onto the denominator (along with perhaps another marker on
the numerator) to indicate the accumulation, as peHruS posits (ordinary
numbering wouldn't work because of the way the construction was configured
or something)... and then it became the sole fraction-marker in the
fossilized construction of vatlhvI'. Ugh, that's about as strained as
peHruS'. Oh well.
>Again, BEWARE. These are MY ideas, not Marc Okrand's. Do not use them unless
>they become approved.
Yeah... There simply isn't enough to generalize from *one* word. In
English, we have evidence from not one but *several* words that the prefix
"to-" on nouns of time means "this": today, tonight, even tomorrow. But we
can't generalize to to-afternoon or to-Thursday.
>peHruS
~mark