tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 13 21:10:17 2000
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Weighing in on -Du'
- From: "Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Weighing in on -Du'
- Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 00:09:37 -0500
Ironically, I think a major point is being missed here. In English when
we refer to a table as having legs, we are not speaking literally. This
is a metaphor. Figurative language, by definition, plays havoc with
denotative meaning and by extension the rules of a language's grammar
that would normally apply if a non-figurative interpretation was
granted.
The table leg example is a good one because the metaphor used to be
carried even further as a few anecdotes will, I hope, illustrate:
In Victorian England the legs of a table were often referred to as
"limbs" rather than "legs." The latter was too provocative. The metaphor
was carried even further when very proper families began applying
special stockings to their table limbs, for modesty's sake.
And, wandering over to German and the early days of psychology, among
Freud's case studies was a young boy who, knowing that tables possessed
legs, wondered why they didn't also possess "wee-wee machers" like he
did.
Both of these are cases of figurative language being curiously treated
literally.
Much of the discussion of the use of -Du' for inanimate objects strikes
me as a similar error in judgment.
Personally, about the only situation where I can see a Klingon using
-Du' when referring to table legs is if he was sawing them off the
tables and handing them out to amputees on the battle field as a
stop-gap measure until better prosthetics could be found. Even there,
it's arguably an end run around the metaphor, but that's only if you
grant that Klingon would come up with the same metaphor about tables
andtheir supports being "legs" as English does.
A more interesting question, from the point of view of those familiar
with the concepts of linguistic determinism (aka Sapir/Whorf) is whether
-Du' applies *consistently* to the body parts of deceased organisms. At
what point does a pair of chicken legs stop being body parts?
And before you start invoking examples about stuffed to'baj legs, keep
in mind that such examples might be suspect as the majority (at least,
the examples I can think of off hand) come from ritualized situations
which may reflect frozen grammatical forms.
Just some thoughts.
Lawrence