tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Feb 02 18:31:56 1998

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

-pu' vs. -mey, etc. (was Re: SoSwI' be'nI')

ghItlh DIoraH:
> A scientist working with a chimpanzee which 
> has learned to communicate might use the 
> suffixes -pu' -wI' when refering to  the chimp. 
> Of course his friends who don't believe the 
> chimp is intelligent enough will laugh at him 
> and still call the chimp an [it] and use suffixes
> like -lIj.  Situations like this would be debatable.
> Most people (especially religous) believe a spirit
> is intelligent and understands communication, 
> whether it is physically capable of speaking or not.

I once used <ghaH> to refer to my African Grey Parrot and got dinged for
it. I do agree that she is definitely not a sentient being capable of
using language (not yet, anyway), but there are lab animals who do blur
the line a bit. There is another African Grey Parrot at the University
of Arizona named Alex who is, arguably, the only non-human creature in
the world who can *speak* and understand English at some level. His
vocabulary is measured in dozens of words, not hundreds or thousands,
and a small portion of his vocabulary is not standard English. His word
for apple, for instance, is "banerry" because it is (in his mind) a
cross between an bannana and a cherry. He also uses and understands only
very simple grammar. Alex's human researcher is Dr. Irene M. Pepperberg;
if you are interested, search the Net. She has been published in such
journals as _Applied Psycholinguistics_, so a few people on this list
may have bumped into her work...

toH. pe'vIl jabbI'IDghomvam Qu'na'vo' jIHaw', 'ej DaH tlhIngan Hol
vIlo'nIS. SajwIjvaD <'oH> <-wIj> je vIlo' 'e' vIHech, 'ach chaq rut
jIQagh 'ej bong <ghaH> <-wI'> je vIlo'. jISaHbe'. pupnISbe' Hoch
vIqonbogh 'e' vIwuqta'. DaH pIj vIlablaH 'ej rejmorgh vIDanISbe'.

pagh pupbe'

Back to archive top level