tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Oct 17 15:31:08 1996
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Re: KLBC: Thinking and compounding
- From: "Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KLBC: Thinking and compounding
- Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 18:34:44 -0500
I'm running behind (so what else is new) but I didn't want to let this
message from September 28th, 1996 slip by.
peHruS writes:
> trI'Qal writes:
>
><< paqmey Dawam jIwambe'taHvIS >>
>
>as an answer regarding "hunting" books. Here I jump in:
>
>Let's substitute {nej} for {wam}, okay? "looking for, hunting,
>searching"
>
>{wam} means "hunt for game animals," I believe.
And of course he's quite correct. However, I look at this error and maybe
it's my training in psycholinguistics gnawing away at the inside of my
skull, but I don't want to see it as an error.
In fact, it's only an error if you insist on viewing the sentence
literally. But aren't we getting tired of a purely literal language when
(I would argue) the most powerful tool in any language is to talk about
things figuratively? Using <wam> instead of <nej> is a very easily
understood metaphor, something we use far too rarely in our Klingon
compositions, and for good reason. We're all so new at the language that
risking an unintelligible metaphor is very daring indeed. But this one is
so straightforward; I would even go so far as to suggest that it's probably
a dead metaphor in the Klingon language. Of course, we can't know that,
but that's still no reason to avoid figurative language. There's plenty in
the context to ensure the metaphor is interpretable.
Oh at least, that's my opinion.
Lawrence
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