tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Dec 10 15:57:55 2003

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Some thoughts on vocabulary (was Re: Word for "random")

Teresh000 ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

ghItlh Voragh:
> 
> 
> ter'eS:
> > >> I'm still strongly attracted to {pat}, though, despite Voragh's and
> > >> Quvar's examples, which refer only to objects,
> 
> Quvar:
> > > These are all Marc Okrands examples, which refer only to objects!
> 
> SuStel:
> >Okrand never explained how to use the word.  He never said, "It means this
> >and not that."  He just gave us a one-word definition, and used it a number
> >of times.  That does not prove that ter'eS is wrong.
> 
> I agree.  Certainly every English speaker on this list will understand him.
> 
> >He's not declaring that /pat/ must be able to refer to conceptual systems,
> >he's saying that he THINKS it can.  Likewise, you THINK it can't.  There's
> >no proof either way.
> 
> Other than the 18 examples as a physical system and *no* counter-examples 
> as a conceptual system.  <g>  

I sometimes think we are too literal (or maybe I mean, concrete) in our use
of words.  When I was studying Russian, I remember thinking, "Wow, you can
tell that the Russian language is still really close to its agrarian
past" because it had the word (for example) "koren'", which means "the
root/basis of a situation" and also "plant root".  I was completely
oblivious to the same effects in English, where "wing" originally referred
to the appendage of a bird, but could be equally applied to the lifting
surface of an aircraft, or one section of a building.  All the meanings
derived from a single simple object, exactly as in Russian, but the
association was clear to me in Russian because it was unfamiliar, and
totally hidden from me in English. To me, the three "wings" might as
well have been entirely different words.

My point is that I think we do something similar in Klingon, that is, we
want there to be different words for things, because if the words are
the same, it feels as weird as "koren'" did to me: too transparent and
hence too artificial.  Consider the word {tut}. I always assumed from the
beginning that it referred to an architectural feature.  When someone a
while back used it in the sense of a military formation, it jarred me.
But then I thought, why does it have to be either/or?  Could {tut}
refer to the structural support of a building _and_ the military support
of an attack group?

In the case of {pat}, Maltz isn't the most introspective entity, so it's
no real surprise we lack words for a whole range of abstract concepts.
His vocabulary, especially in later years, has always tended to emphasize
concrete nouns. To me, the existence of the word {pat} referring to
physical systems strongly implies the existence of its reference to
conceptual systems, and resistence to this idea may be due to the same
sort of dissonance I felt when encountering "koren'" for the first time.

Word-formation in different languages is a really fascinating topic, and
they all go about it in different ways.  It seems clear to me that one of
the ways that Klingon expanded its vocabulary was by extending the meanings
of simple words (as opposed to compounding, which seems to be a more recent
process in Klingon).  I refuse to believe that the various verbs that
describe the movement of an aircraft can only be used in speaking of
aircraft.  I can't believe that the morpheme {pu'} (as in {pu'HIch})
never meant anything other than "phaser"; a fantasy of mine is that we'll
someday discover it's the old Klingon word for a lightning bolt. We 
generally have only the "modern", technical meanings of these words,
which is understandable given their source, but I'm convinced the older
associations remain.

-- ter'eS

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