tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Oct 18 22:05:54 1998
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Re: names and "to be" again (was Re: KLBC)
ja' charghwI':
>bIghoHchu'lI', jupwI'. Meanwhile, there is an angle to this that
>you may not have considered. Perhaps it is merely arbitrary that
>we do not apply definite or indefinite articles to names in
>English. What is different about a name that it is not correct
>to say, "My name is the Alan."
I *have* considered this angle, and I have rejected it. In English, as
in many other languages, names often *do* get articles before them, but
only when talking about the thing that the name refers to. One doesn't
add an article when talking about the name itself (unless the article is
actually part of the name, as in "The Shining" or "La Giocanda"--but it
isn't *adding* one even then).
>Or what if there is a whole room
>full of people named Alan. Let's say it is an Alan convention.
>Someone asks what your name is and you say, "My name is an
>Allen."
No, I wouldn't say that. As soon as I say "my name is" something, that
something is going to be either a name or something that describes names.
[It might be an adjective like "common" or "hard to spell", for example.]
"An Allen" (or "an Alan") describes a *person*, not a name. I don't think
I'm being unreasonably pedantic about this.
>It sounds strange to us because by convention, we don't put
>articles in front of proper names, but that's not always the
>case in all languages. La Paris, par example.
To the best of my knowledge, one might call the city itself "La Paris",
but the name is always just "Paris". I welcome corrections from anyone
with more authoritative knowledge than mine.
>So, what if the problem you are having is not with there being
>something peculiar about having someone's name be the object of
>the verb "to be", but instead is a quirk of English that we
>don't put articles in front of proper names?
I'm not complaining about putting articles in front of proper names when
those names are being *used*. I deal with {torgh jIH} fine, for example;
whatever objections I have to it are merely a matter of style, not grammar.
But when a name is being defined or given or identified, I still feel it
is syntactically wrong to use it as the object of a "to be" verb. *I* am
an Alan; my name is not.
>Consider other nouns we don't use articles on, like abstract
>nouns. "Your problem is congestion." We would not say, "Your
>problem is a congestion." Do you argue that we must always say
>this as "Congestion is your problem."?
First, "is" works fine to indicate equivalence *in English*. Second, the
"your problem is a congestion" phrasing doesn't sound wrong to me anyway.
Make it "your disease is mumps" in Klingon instead, and I'm indeed going
to want it to be said {roplIj 'oH "mumps"-'e'}.
>When I say {tlhIngan jIH,} I'm saying that I (the subject) am a
>subset of Klingons (the object). When I say, "Congestion is your
>problem," I'm not saying that "Congestion" (the subject) is a
>subset of "your problem" (the object). Similarly, "Alan" is not
>a subset of "my name".
I agree completely with the intent of what you are saying. The difference
between equivalence and categorization/subsetting is quite obvious -- and
that difference is exactly the problem I have for using the {tlhIngan jIH}
phrasing for the equivalence idea.
>I argue that both Klingon pronouns and the verb "to be"
>sometimes indicate equivalents and sometimes indicate subsets.
>When it indicates a subset, then the subject is the subset and
>the object is the larger set. When it indicates equivalents,
>then the subject and object are reversable.
*If* a pronoun as "to be" indicates equivalents, the subject and object are
referring to the same thing and are certainly interchangable. I'm not yet
convinced that it can (or should be able to) do so.
>Your observation
>about articles is an arbitrary quirk of English that has nothing
>to do with the grammar.
My observation about articles was intended to point out that in each of the
examples I looked at of a pronoun used as "to be", it was either an obvious
"subset" usage or one that could be interpreted as one. None of them is a
clear contradiction of my interpretation of {'oH} as "is a".
charghwI', you were quite outspoken and passionate when you argued against
trying to translate directly a "what weapon do you want?" type of question.
I've got a similar thing going with the "my name is Alan" type of statement.
-- ghunchu'wI'