tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Oct 31 12:51:44 2009

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Re: intuition and grammar (was Re: Ditransitive reflexives)

Christopher Doty ([email protected])



I missed the first part of this discussion because I just joined the
list (hello, btw!), but I'm not sure what the issue is here...  In
English, all of the examples of ditransitive reflexives are
essentially idiomatic (e.g., "I gave myself some time off" is really
"I took some time off").  Likewise, something like "I bought myself a
knife" is equal to "I bought a knife for myself," which would be
easily rendered in Klingon, I believe (my first attempt at a Klingon
sentence, please be nice!), as

jIHvaD taj vIje'pu'

The only place I can think of where a ditransitive wouldn't have a
non-literal meaning would be a slave buying one's self from one's
owner, a rather marginal situation...

So, can I ask what the original question was regarding?  Namely, what
was trying to be said? (Feel free to email me directly if you don't
want to spam the list with repeat stuff...)

Chris

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 12:10, Doq <[email protected]> wrote:
> A second issue is that if we change the language too much, we
> essentially create a dialect that someone else who studied Okrand's
> materials would not understand. The Klingon Institute was not created
> in order to create or foster non-standard dialects of the Klingon
> language.
>
> Doq
>
> On Oct 31, 2009, at 1:34 PM, ghunchu'wI' wrote:
>
>> ja'pu' lay'tel SIvten:
>>> It's safer to walk around a hole than to jump in. We don't know how
>>> deep the
>>> holes are, and they're difficult to illuminate.
>>
>> ja' [email protected]:
>>> Yes, but if there's a problem, we need to fix it.  It would only be
>>> the smart, right, and beneficial thing to do.  Fill the hole!
>>
>> It would be the presumptive and arrogant thing to do.
>>
>> We're just studying and using this language.  We lack the authority
>> to change or add to its grammar.  In the fantasy context of Klingon
>> being the language spoken by real Klingons, we don't have any
>> information on what to fill the holes with.  We do have information
>> telling us that some holes are true gaps in the language and not just
>> gaps in our knowledge.
>>
>> motlh qay'be' SengHey.  Sengbe'.  qaD neH.  Hol yItI'Qo'.  Hol
>> yIlo'qu'.
>>
>> -- ghunchu'wI'
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>






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