tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Apr 24 07:29:49 2004
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Re: a little bit pregnant?
- From: "QeS lagh" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: a little bit pregnant?
- Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 00:29:10 +1000
- Bcc:
ghItlhpu' lay'tel SIvten:
>no, but is a hole a state or quality? i don't think so.
I was just using it as an example of how weird I find "a little bit
pregnant". Other than that, it doesn't have much relevance. I recognise
that.
>i wasn't using pregnant in any figurative sense. i meant it quite
>literally.
>a woman is either pregnant or not. if she is not pregnant, then she is 0%
>pregnant. if she is pregnant, the amount of her pregnancy is positive and
>greater than zero.
>i agree that it would be a little bit weird for a woman to announce her
>pregnancy by saying "Honey, I'm a little bit pregnant". it would be a lot
>more normal to announce "Honey, I'm pregnant" to establish that her amount
>of pregnancy is non-zero, to which her mate might reply "Pregnant? How
>pregnant are you?", and she then answer "Only a little bit.", meaning
>(probably) that she is in the initial stage of pregnancy. (similar to your
>klingon example above).
vaj cha' DoSmey DIqIptaH. qechvam'e' pIm yoSmaj Holmey 'e' vISovchu'be'
(*Australia* vIDab 'e' DaSov), 'ach jIHvaD taQ "not very pregnant". cha'
DuHmey neH vItu' jIH. "not very pregnant" vIyajlaH, 'ach not vIjatlh jIH,
'ej not jIjatlh "How pregnant are you?" 'e' vIHarqu'.
I think we may have to agree to disagree on that. Maybe it's a difference
between our dialects of English (as you know, I'm Australian), but to me
"not very pregnant" is bizarre. I see the term as part of a fundamentally
binary opposition, not a greyscale from conception to birth. I can
understand it, but I wouldn't ever say it. I don't think I'd ever ask "How
pregnant are you?" either. I don't mean to imply anything by that. I'm just
showing the way *I* see it.
>another example of this kind of thing is whether a door is open or shut.
>if it's shut, it's 0% open, but if it's open, it might be open only a
>crack, or it might be wide open, i.e., any positive number up to and
>including 100%.
ghuHom juvlaH vay', SoS chor juvlaH vay', yatlhtaHvIS SoS qaSbogh poH'e'
juvlaH vay'; 'ach {yatlh} jatlhlaHmeH, cha' DuH neH vItu': "implantation"
"non-implantation" ghap.
The size of the foetus, the visible effects of the size of the foetus, the
length of term... all of these *are* scalable events. But as I said in my
previous message, for me the difference is between implantation and
non-implantation of the embryo. That's not an opposition that has any room
for scaling (although I like your argument). It's similar to the opposition
between {lagh jIH} and {Sogh jIH}; there's nowhere to go in between the two.
They are "quantum states", if you like.
>"For a binary state, the positive pole is often scalable, even though the
>negative pole is not. For example, there are several degrees of
>'pregnancy','openness', 'fullness', and 'inebriation', but the same does
>not apply to their opposites 'non-pregnant', 'closed', 'empty', and
>'sober'."
It looks like you're quoting from something here. Do you have a reference so
I can read further into this? Why can't I say that the glass is "half
empty"? :P
Again, this is all just how *I* see things.
Savan.
QeS lagh
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