tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Apr 30 07:56:52 2012

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[Tlhingan-hol] Fwd: Question regarding purpose clauses

lojmIt tI'wI'nuv ([email protected]) 

<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>Begin forwarded message:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);"><b>From: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">lojmIt tI'wI'nuv &lt;<a href="mailto:[email protected]";>[email protected]</a>&gt;<br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);"><b>Subject: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;"><b>Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Question regarding purpose clauses</b><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);"><b>Date: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">April 30, 2012 10:53:54 AM EDT<br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);"><b>To: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">Felix Malmenbeck &lt;<a href="mailto:[email protected]";>[email protected]</a>&gt;<br></span></div><br><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div apple-content-edited="true">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><div>On Apr 30, 2012, at 6:21 AM, Felix Malmenbeck wrote:</div></span></div><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote type="cite">Unfortunately, Okrand has (gasp!) written some pretty ugly canon sentences.<br></blockquote><br>That's certainly true, and it's worth considering under what conditions he wrote the various sentences:<br>{[wI]qIpmeH Qatlh'a'} was part of a movie script, so I'm guessing he put some amount of thought into it.<br>The interpretation of {qaSuchmeH jIpaSqu'}, however, was part of a newsgroup posting, and probably didn't receive as much thought. To add to that, it wasn't even his sentence to begin with.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Some of the worst canon in existence is in movies because of the editing process. valQIS's lines were all shot while she was speaking English and then dubbed afterwards and Okrand invented weird grammar to keep words coming out of her mouth while her lips were moving, even though what she otherwise would have said would have used fewer syllables. Then there's the&nbsp;"Target engines only"&nbsp;line that became&nbsp;"I wanted prisoners". An outtake of one became the other when the director realized he hadn't explained why he wanted the gunner to target engines only (actors attempting to say one thing, but not quite well enough to keep was given a new subtitle for the other line because the director didn't think of adding the other line until the actors were out of makeup and the set was broken down). Then there's that completely unintelligible emphatic mumble by an officer making some sort of empassioned argument while spreading out a map on a table. It seemed to be composed mostly of the syllable "wa" said over and over again.</div><div><br></div><div>And then there's {taH pagh taHbe'}. No thought went into that at all. He's on the set with a handful of prepared translated lines from MacBeth and other very Klingon-culturally-interesting scenes in Shakespeare, and the director turned to him and said, "Gimme 'To be or not to be.'" The actors were ready. The cameras were ready. Okrand knew he had a problem he didn't have time to solve well, so he improvised.</div><div><br></div><div>It is challenging to fathom how "we hit it" is the purpose of "it is difficult". Unless this is an unexplained idiom, it's a piss poor excuse for a sentence conveying meaning. Better would have been {Qatlh'a' wIqIpmeH Qu'?}. That would be hard to misinterpret.</div><div><br></div><div>... but then people are saying these things, and people say poorly expressed things all the time. The characters in question were back-woods Klingons with self-esteem issues. There is no indication they were particularly well educated or that they spoke particularly standard Klingon. They are not Klingon language instructors. They are guys, bored, perhaps a little stupid, and aimlessly wandering around space looking for trouble. Do you really want to learn to talk like they do?</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>It's interesting, though, to see the breadth of opinions on this topic:<br>I accept those canonical sentences and make certain extrapolations.<br>Most seem to accept those canonical sentences as being good sentences, but don't think my extrapolations are correct.<br>You seem to be skeptical towards the sentences, themselves.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I probably understand how to say things in Klingon better than Okrand. That doesn't mean that I have any intentions of taking his authority away from him. He created the language. I have enormous respect for him for that. That respect won't stop me from rolling my eyes when I see what he does with the language from time to time.</div><div><br></div><div>The issue at hand is that Okrand has never spoken the language in the way that most people here do. It's like he has to go back and learn it each time he has to write something. And sometimes, he forgets stuff or doesn't think of stuff while he comes up with these canon examples. Other times, he decides that humor is more important than consistency or than making the language better able to express a wide range of useful meanings. He has many motives and each has its turn in affecting the language. Making the language a good tool for clearly expressing meaning is only one of his motives, and it has to wait its turn in line with his other motives.</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>...and I really do think there's a case to be made for all three of those positions, and probably many more variations thereof, which is why I'm glad we're having this discussion.<br><br><blockquote type="cite">As for "I was going to visit you, but it was late," there are better options.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">{tlhoy jIpaSmo' qaSuchbe'.} Klingon doesn't have an irrealis or subjunctive.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">If you mean that something would have happened, except that X prevented<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">it, then you need to say that the thing didn't happen because of X.<br></blockquote><br>Marc didn't interpret {qaSuchmeH jIpaSqu'} to mean that the meeting didn't take place, though, as with {tlhoy jIpaSmo' qaSuchbe'}; he interpreted it as "I do visit you, but am very late.", and gave alternative translations for the describing a visit that was prevented by tardiness.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Either I missed something or the more complete transcript was not included.</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote type="cite">In general, I think most people write better Klingon sentences if they begin with<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">an expression that they wish to make and then survey the grammatical tools<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">available in the language to find the best construction, instead of starting with a<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">grammatical construction and searching for the full range of expressions that can<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">be forced through it.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">There are many posts to this list over the years that ask some variation on the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">question: "We all agree that we can say X with grammatical tool Y, but can we<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">also say Z with it?" The answer is usually some variation on, "No."<br></blockquote><br>However, if we are to survey the grammatical tools available to us, we must know what those tools are. It seems to me that a natural way to find out is that when you find an example in canon, you ask yourself if it's a reasonbale construction, then check if there are more examples, and then ask your peers their opinions.<br><br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>&nbsp;I didn't really expect to dissuade you from doing this. It's a very popular approach to the language, especially among linguists who never learn to speak it. Others use the approach as well, but no group does it so much as linguists who want to claim great authority over its use without actually using it.</div><div><br></div><div><div>There are definitely exceptions to the generality I'm about to make, but someone other than me once noted that Klingonists tended to fall into three groups:</div><div><br></div><div>1. Star Trek fans who almost never learned the language, though they sincerely struggled with it for years. There are a couple of wonderful exceptions to this who, through raw persistence have become fine speakers of the language.</div><div><br></div><div>2. Linguists who love to argue about the language and dig deeply into exactly how far each grammatical construction can be stretched before it becomes impossible to derive meaning from it. Again, there are fine exceptions.</div><div><br></div><div>3. Computer programmers or support people who mysteriously tend to learn the language within a year and find it relatively simple to express a range of meaning sometimes beyond what Okrand expected the language to reach.</div><div><br></div><div>This was perhaps more true in the early years when Qanqor, Seqram, ghunchu'wI' and a handful of others, almost exclusively computer-involved people, learned the language. As years pass, people from a wider variety of backgrounds have joined in and added their patch to the quilt. There's room at the table for wide variety.</div><div><br></div><div>There's also a quote from one of my coworkers about the variety of people in the world in general and in most groups, which perhaps I'll choose to write in Klingon instead of English:</div><div><br></div><div>qo' chenmoHmeH Hoch chovnatlh poQlu' net Sovlaw' 'ach jIQoch: Hoch chovnatlh wIghaj neH.</div><div><br></div><div>I'm not proposing that it's true. It's just humorous, and I think the humor carries in either language.</div><div><br></div><div>pItlh</div><div>lojmIt tI'wI'nuv</div></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br></body></html>
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