tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon May 06 15:18:49 1996
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Consonant Clusters
- From: Mark Mandel <[email protected]>
- Subject: Consonant Clusters
- Date: Mon, 06 May 1996 18:16:19 -0500
Sa' qIQwI', jughItlh:
>>>>>
> -y' and -w' are also consonant clusters.
Are not. TKD lists y and w as vowels as far as I can recall.
y = diphthong forming I w = diphthong forming u
<<<<<
bIlughbe'. cha'logh yIlaDqa'.
<y> and <w> are consonants (TKD p. 16: the first thing you should
reread). Vowel + {y or w} in the same syllable forms a diphthong.
The second thing you should reread is the message from marqoS, sent
May 1, that you are disagreeing with so bluntly. I tracked it down (you
didn't identify even the writer) in Digest #488 to check the text, but that
was hardly necessary, because your own quotation includes all that's
needed. Look at your own message again, where I quote it above if you
like. marqoS is NOT talking about <y> and <w>, but about <-y'> and
<-w'>: that is, <y> and <w> *followed by apostrophe*, and specifically
when they occur after a vowel.
Them apostrophes is sneaky little things. They'll slip right past ya if ya
ain't real careful.
marqoSvaD ghItlh r'Hul je:
>>>>>
>There are lots of places where -rgh shows up. -y' and -w' are also
>consonant clusters. They're all syllable-final, not syllable-initial,
>and these three are the *only* consonant clusters allowed.
But where is that stated? You know I'm going to keep harping on this
until somebody gives me a page number. {{;-) (Why do I have a feeling
the answer is, "Well, it's not stated. But they're the only ones we've
seen." So the above statement would need to be amended with "at this
point in time.")
<<<<<
Like anything else we say about Klingon that isn't directly supported by
canon*, this has the status of theory. General relativity is also a theory.
So is evolution. So is gravity. Somebody asked Einstein when relativity
would stop being a theory and become a fact. He answered, more or
less, "A theory can never be *proved*, but a single fact can *disprove*
it." Sure, "at this point in time", but read on.
(* Note the spelling: one <n>. Hey, I nominate this fact for inclusion in the
FAQ.)
Somebody COULD discover tomorrow that if baking soda, yellow paint,
powdered diamond, and fresh iguana blood are mixed in equal
proportions by weight while three bagpipers (exactly two of them female
and exactly one of them painted blue from head to foot) play "Scotland
the Brave", gravity decreases by 18.9% for an hour in a 12-meter circle
centered on the iguana. But it would be very surprising, because such
an exception would be unsupported by anything we think we know
about physics. It would be just as unlikely, though not as humorous, for
something (say, an asteroid, or a planet of another star) to have its
gravity decrease with the cube of distance instead of the square.
Well, linguistics isn't a "hard science", and we have far less data about
Klingon than we do about gravity. But it IS a science, the one that I
practice; and even though Klingon violates some of the patterns of
regularity observed in Terran languages (and humorously, to us
linguists), it is very regular in some respects. Its phonology -- the
structure of its sound patterns -- while bizarre, is simple and extremely
consistent through all the canonical data on hand, apart from a very small
number of evident errors (typoes; I don't remember them offhand, but I'm
sure some other list members can supply them).
The syllable structure of Klingon, as deduced from the available data, can
be summed up in about four sentences.
1. The vowels are a, e, I, o, u; the consonants are b, ch, D, gh, H, j, l, m,
n, ng, p, q, Q, r, S, t, tlh, v, w, y, '. [This follows or accompanies a
description of each sound.]
2. Every syllable starts with exactly one consonant plus exactly one
vowel.
3. The vowel of a syllable may be followed by any single consonant,
except that the rounded vowels [o and u, for which you round your lips]
cannot be followed by w (the rounded semivowel).
4. The vowel of a syllable may be followed by <w'> (with the same
restriction as in 3), <y'>, or <rgh>.
This description says nothing about relative frequency, but it completely
describes permitted and forbidden syllables. You can apply these rules
to any possible sequence of Klingon sounds (=letters, in Okrand's
transcription) and discover whether that sequence forms a "legal"
syllable according to them; every canonical Klingon word can be broken
into "legal" syllables; and I don't think there's any substantively different
way to describe the data in equivalent detail.
Okrand's description of the language in TKD is admirably precise and
scientific, within the constraints imposed by writing for a popular
audience (such as avoiding technical terminology); consider, for
example, his discussion of the suffix <-oy>, p. 174. While Okrand could
at any time, uh, discover a word that broke these rules, it would be a
great surprise to all Klingonists who are trained as linguists; dare I say,
"and to Okrand himself"?
So, while marqoS's summary of consonant clusters is nowhere explicit in
canon, it is very clearly implied.
marqem, tlhIngan veQbeq la'Hom -- Heghbej ghIHmoHwI'pu'!
Subcommander Markemm,
Klingon Sanitation Corps -- Death to Litterbugs!
Mark A. Mandel : [email protected]
Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
320 Nevada St. : Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/