tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Apr 24 01:00:49 2004
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Re: a little bit pregnant?
- From: "QeS lagh" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: a little bit pregnant?
- Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 18:00:06 +1000
- Bcc:
ghItlhpu' lay'tel SIvten:
>this is a bad example, i think. of course, a woman is either pregnant or
>not, so there is no middle ground, no "little bit". or is there? the way
>it is used is that she has been pregnant for only a short time, or that her
>pregnancy isn't very obvious, in which case it makes perfect sense.
It does make sense, but only because the semantics of "pregnant" have
shifted slightly. The word "pregnant" carries visual or temporal
connotations: a woman can *look* pregnant without actually *being* pregnant,
a staple of countless comedy skits.
For me, either the foetus is implanted and growing (in which case she is
pregnant) or it is not (in which case she is not pregnant). To use my other
example, have you ever been out in a field and slipped down half a hole?
Both of these might be understandable in some instances, but add other
qualifiers to them and we get things that are either unusual or outright
bizarre: "She's thoroughly pregnant", "I'm more pregnant than you!" I don't
think I know what I'd do if my future wife were to come up to me and say
"Honey, I'm a little bit pregnant." Did the test come back as only a little
bit positive? :)
Perhaps it would have been better if I'd given some context or the Klingon
term:
puqbe': vavoy, SoSoy, jIyatlh... (Dad, Mum, I'm pregnant...)
nItebHa' vav SoS je: bIyatlh'a' SoH??? (You're PREGNANT???)
puqbe': qay'be', jIyatlhqu'be'! (It's OK, I'm not very pregnant!)
Another example is "a little bit dead". There's no middle ground (although
some would disagree).
>and there are probably many other similar situations where an apparently
>binary possibility can be interpreted as the whole range between the
>opposite extremes. and this may have application in klingon, too.
It may. I can't think of many examples off the top of my head, but the
separation of {Sop}, {'ep} and {tlhutlh} may be one of these. Similarly, the
five different words for degrees of fighting (I can only remember {vay} and
{lul} off the top of my head) might have some relevance to this idea.
The other way around may also be the case, where a ranged possibility may be
reduced to a binary opposition. This may explain why we have no word for
"grey" (between {chIS} and {qIj}), no word for "liquid" (between {SubwI'}
and {SIp}) and (dare I say it) no way to introduce possibility into an
event: either it's likely or it's not, either it will happen or it won't.
Perhaps that's the way a Klingon would treat things.
Savan.
QeS lagh
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