tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Oct 19 20:06:12 1998
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Re: names and "to be" again (was Re: KLBC)
ja' charghwI':
>"Perhaps it is merely arbitrary that we do not apply definite or
>indefinite articles to names in English." You answer that by
>explaining, "One doesn't add an article when talking about the
>name itself." So? I wasn't arguing about that.
I thought your examples looked like that was your point. I apologize
for misunderstanding them. My reply is that I've not seen articles
added in *any* language about which I have enough knowledge to speak.
Of course, since only three of them even *have* indefinite articles
(English, Spanish and Portugese), that's not saying much.
>Your argument seems based upon two apparent observations:
>
>1. The normal use of proper names does not include an article
>(definite or indefinite). [That's "the" or "a" to the
>grammatically uninitiated.)
That's not quite what I'm saying. The "normal" use of proper names
is as a substitute for what they refer to. They are very much like
fancy pronouns. The usage I am concerned about is when it is the
*name itself* being referred to, not the possessor of the name.
>2. In the "to be" sentences that you can think of, especially
>going by the Klingon examples we have, the object of the verb
>"to be" in English does take a definite article or an indefinite
>article, or the Klingon noun uses a Type 4 suffix (which
>identifies the noun as we would do with a possessive pronoun or
>helper words like "this" and "that").
This is not just based on the examples I can come up with offhand.
Voragh presented a comprehensive survey of the topic, and there was
one sentence that makes me strain a bit in order to include it in my
interpretation: {'entepray' 'oH DoS'e'}. But even if I have to bend
it slightly, making it mean not quite exactly what its subtitle said,
it doesn't break.
>Therefore, since the proper names don't have a Type 4 suffix in
>Klingon and they don't have an article in English, and
>people are trying to use these special nouns as objects of "to
>be", then something is wrong and this should not happen.
The wording isn't as I would put it, but the idea is close enough.
>I think to understand all this better, we should look harder at
>what kind of nouns have articles and which ones don't. I think
>you are wrong in your assertion that it has anything to do with
>being a subject or object in a "to be" sentence.
After looking at it closely for a while, my discomfort appears to be
more with using {pong} as the subject of a "to be" sentence while at
the same time using a name as the object.
>[snip survey of English use of indefinite and definite articles]
>Proper names also identify nouns. We don't need articles to
>specify the degree of identity for nouns preceeded by possessive
>pronouns and we don't need articles in front of names. We also
>don't need articles in front of plain old pronouns. *"The I am a
>Klingon."* We already know there is only one "I", so we don't
>need anything else to express that the identity is certain.
Agreed: we don't need articles in front of pronouns. Pronouns are
generally used to stand in for nouns that have already had their
"definiteness" specified. So are names; we don't need articles in
front of them either. But that's when the name is being used as a
stand-in for the thing named.
>...but since any pronoun ALWAYS deserves "the"
>instead of "a" since it is ALWAYS a definite (as in "identified")
>noun, we don't bother using the definite article in front of it.
>In fact, we NEVER use any article in front of it at all.
>
>Now, THERE'S a coincidence! In examples like "I am a Klingon,"
>the "to be" verb is represented by a pronoun, which doesn't need
>an article in English. Meanwhile, if there is an explicit
>subject in a "to be" sentence in Klingon, in English we don't
>use the pronoun any more, so your average subject begins to need
>an article again.
Okay, you've done a reasonable job of working through when and where
articles get used in English subjects of "to be". It's not totally
relevant to my argument, nor is it totally irrelevant, but it's not
what I'm concerned about.
>So, perhaps your attention has been diverted focussing on
>whether the object needed an article by the fact that subjects
>fall under the same rule, and the presence or absence of
>articles has nothing to do with whether it is subject or object
>and instead has to do with whether the noun is a proper name, a
>pronoun or it preceeded by a possessive pronoun.
>
>"The captain is a Klingon."
>
>Now, both the subject and the object have articles. Now, let's
>put a name in it:
>
>Krankor is a Klingon.
>
>The captain is Krankor.
>
>The presence or absence of an article has everything to do with
>names and nothing to do with what is subject or object.
This is fine, except that it misses the "use/mention distinction" that
goes along with a name. In your examples, you are *using* the name as
a glorified pronoun, referring to the named entity. But to take one
of your earlier scenarios, let's imagine a convention of officers all
named Krankor. Suddenly, it's right to say "the captain is a Krankor."
>Now, it would be a bit odd to say, "A Klingon is Krankor,"
>because in that case, we are talking about the member/set
>function of the "to be" verb. Meanwhile, "Krankor is the
>captain," and "The captain is Krankor," are both equally valid
>sentences, much like "My name is Alan," and "Allen is my name,"
>because there is exactly one thing which is "my name" and there
>is one thing which is "Alan". Neither is a subset of the other.
>They are equal in what they are identifying.
Um, no. I have to make a distinction between the two concepts you're
calling "much like" each other. The Captain Krankor example:
Krankor is the captain / the captain is Krankor
Though they are both valid sentences, these don't say quite the same
thing to me. If I encountered {Qanqor ghaH HoD'e'} outside this
discussion, I'd interpret it literally as "the captain is a Krankor."
The name Alan example:
my name is Alan / Alan is my name
I've often grumbled that the first sentence misstates the case, as I
have many names and not all of them are Alan. But the real problem
with my reading of these is that they are using "to be" to indicate
identity, and my thesis here is that Klingon doesn't do that.
>I thank you for bringing me to this point of clarifying my ideas
>about how this works. Had you been less stubborn, I would have
>remained more vague.
Rational debate is a funny thing -- one's tools get sharper with use. :)
>Meanwhile, if you wish to extend your stubbornness even further,
>please address this more explicitly explained perspective. Also,
>if you simply believe that *I* am stubborn and incorrect, please
>point out to me the flaw in my logic or the incorrect premise
>upon which it is built.
Your logic is fine, as are your premises. You have merely missed two
additional premises that form the core of my discomfort: names do not
always refer to the thing or person having the name; and pronouns as
"to be" can always be interpreted as indicating categorization/subset.
>> >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.
>
>No. "My name is" doesn't make any difference here at all. What
>makes the difference is that names don't get articles placed in
>front of them for the same reason that pronouns don't get them
>and the same reason that nouns identified by possessive
>pronouns or possessive proper nouns don't need them. The degree
>to which we are being definite about a noun is already
>established, so we don't need to set this degree of certainty
>about identifying a specific noun as we do with definite or
>indefinite articles.
>
>> [It might be an adjective like "common" or "hard to spell", for example.]
>
>[snip list of "My name is..." sentences]
>
>"My name is..." Need I go on? Starting with "My name is..." has
>nothing to do with whether or not the object will have an
>article in front of it. The object of that sentence will need or
>not need an article depending solely upon whether in any other
>context that same noun (with any Type 4 equivalents or
>noun-noun possessives still attached) would need an article.
But your list failed to include any examples where you actually gave
a name using "is" to indicate equivalence. None of them had anything
in them to yield the problem I have with the "my name is Will" phrasing.
>> "An Allen" (or "an Alan") describes a *person*, not a name. I don't think
>> I'm being unreasonably pedantic about this.
>
>No. You are simply being inaccurate. At least you are not being
>approximate!
I disagree completely with your assessment of my inaccuracy. Can you
give me a valid example of describing someone's name as "a Charlotte"
or "a Benjamin"? A name can be described as "a word" or "a sound" or
"a symbol", but I am quite certain it can not be "an Alan". A person
can be "an Alan" (but he can not be "a sound" or "a word").
>It is not so much that you have missed a target. It is that
>you have missed THE target because you took aim at some OTHER
>target, fooled by a similarity between the two. Whatever the
>case, the true target has not yet been hit by you.
I don't know what target you're expecting me to hit here, but I think I
can indicate clearly the one I'm aiming at. Ready? Here it is:
"Klingon pronouns as 'to be' should not be used to indicate
equality the way "my name is Alan" does in English."
After thinking about it carefully, that's all I want to say. The whole
business about articles on the object is all a small tangent that can
justify saying {pongwIj 'oH Alan-'e'} instead of the other way around.
>[...]
>> First, "is" works fine to indicate equivalence *in English*.
>
>Okay, then how do we *in Klingon* express equivalence, if not
>with pronouns in a "to be" construction? Do tell.
Is this a serious question? It sure looks like one. Okay, I'll answer
it seriously.
Equivalence in Klingon is expressed in two ways. One is by the use of
a verb such as {rap} "be the same". The most obvious way to use such a
verb is to give the equivalent things as a plural subject: {rap SoSwI'
be'nI'lI' je} "my mother and your sister are the same." The other way
to indicate equivalence is syntactically, using apposition. The two
things are stated sequentially, both falling in the same syntactic slot
in the sentence. This is commonly used with names: {Qugh torgh puqloD
vIqIHpu'} "I have met Kruge, Torg's son."
Under my interpretation of pronouns as "to be", there's another way that
can be interpreted as equivalence, but it isn't explicit. If one uses a
pronoun as "to be" with a sufficiently well-specified object, that object
can sometimes be restricted to a single thing, and the subject must be a
member of the set containing only that thing.
>> 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'}.
>
>Except for your probably incorrect misobservation about
>articles, could you please explain why?
Because I believe {'oH} to be a categorizer, I thus believe the specific
disease "mumps" should be the subject and the general phrase "your disease"
should be the object.
>You still have not suggested how to express equivalence. You
>just express how offended you are that others try to use
>pronouns in the "to be" construction in order to do so. Do you
>have some other means of doing this that you have simply
>forgotten to share with us?
>
>For years now?
I guess you *were* being serious the first time. Does the verbal {rap}
work for you? I thought it was obvious. The appropriate (as defined by
my unusally narrow interpretation of "to be") use of pronouns as "to be"
*can* express equivalence, but not as a primary syntactic effect. Like
the occasional {'ej} implying sequence, it's the way the world works and
not the grammar that brings out the "equivalence" meaning.
>I respect your right to be passionate about this stuff, but I do
>see one significant difference between the example of my "Which
>weapon do you want?" and your "Alan is my name." I was telling
>people, "There are problems with the way you guys are trying to
>express this question, but you can avoid all those problems if
>you change it to a command for others to choose." You are
>telling us, "There is a problem with your trying to express
>equivalents through pronoun/"to be" expressions." You don't
>offer any suggestions on how else to express this.
Actually, I *have* been giving my preferred way to express this, and I
have done it every single time I mentioned my discomfort with phrases
like {torgh 'oH pongwIj'e'}. I'm sure you'll recognize it immediately:
{pongwIj 'oH torgh'e'}
Since "my name" is rather restricted in this context, this phrase does
a pretty good job of indicating equivalence between {torgh} and {pongwIj}.
But, again, it's only in this particular context that the equivalence
holds; the idea doesn't work the same when stated in the other order.
And in the case of names, I don't even think equivalence is necessarily
the right concept to be expressing.
-- ghunchu'wI'