tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 10 06:47:43 1993

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Power Klingon

>From: Nick Nicholas <[email protected]>
>Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1993 00:10:10 +1100 (GMT)

>To [email protected] respond I thus:

'Bout time, too.

>#Another interesting construction I haven't fully analyzed: "cha'vatlh ben
>#HIq" is given for "two-century-old ale".  This seems to be a use of "ben" a
>#little beyond what we know; I might have understood "cha'vatlh ben HIq
>#vItlhutlh" as "I drank ale 200 years ago" (and it probably means that
>#too).

>Still having no access to TKD *sigh*, I'll have to wait on this one, but it
>sounds like a kludge solution. (Don't think of it as a kludge; think of it
>as liberal exploitation of limited grammatical resources...)

Actually, I believe I've come up with an explanation that works, tho may be
a mite prosodic.  Consider: {ben} means "a year in the past", with the
(perhaps kludgy) convention common to nouns of time that {wa'ben} is "last
year", {cha'ben} is "two years ago", etc. (as we've seen in {wa'leS},
{cha'leS}, etc...  You *did* see my use of loSmaHleS in Jonah, right?).
OK.  So {cha'vatlhben} is "the year two hundred years before the current
one" or something, right?  Now we just have a simple noun-noun
construction: {cha'vatlhben HIq} is "ale of the year two hundred years
before now".  That may be slightly less precise than "two-century-old ale",
(e.g. it might be ale whose recipe was invented then, say), but it
certainly includes that meaning.  The ambiguity I mentioned above is a
reasonable thing to find in a natural language, and I don't think there's
anything wrong with it.

>#There may be evidence for an independent ?nga' root for "to mate" in the
>#insult "targhlIj yInga'??? yIruch" ("go and mate with your targ"), but I'm
>#not sure I heard the word right.

>Wasn't this a veS Qo'noS word? I forget.

veS Qo'noS had {nga'chuq} for "perform sex", and there was some discussion
as to using {?nga'} as an independent root.  In any case, I think it's
pretty clear that the word in PK is {nagh} and not {nga'}.

>#It seems from phrases used that a feeling I expressed earlier about the
>#"-neS" suffix was on the right track: that it expresses respect for the
>#*person(s) addressed* no matter who the subject of the sentence is.  I see
>#this in sentences like "po'neS baHwI'pu'lI'" (your gunners are skillful,
>#your honor).  Your mileage may vary.

>Well, not necessarily. Referent honorifics in Japanese can pay respect to
>the honoured person *to do with* the subject, rather than the subject itself,
>if it's inanimate. Thus "Your bed is green" could be expressed in Japanese
>as the equivalent of "SuDneS Qong", where the neS Implies that the bed is
>yours. Definite evidence for neS being an addressee honorific would come if
>the addressee was an object, which i don't think happens in the examples.
>But my gut feeling is that you're right.

Mine too.

>#Another sentence I wondered about was "pu'HIchwIj
>#Daleghpu'", which is translated "Have you seen my phaser?"  I'd have
>#expected "pu'HIchwIj Daleghpu''a'".  

>This sounds like an out-and-out error, but since it's now canon, I wonder
>how we account for the omission of 'a'? Maybe it's optional, but if so,
>under what circumstances?

Probably just a screwup on Okrand's part, or else you could say that
colloquially you can ask a question by voice-inflection and not grammar,
like you can in English ("You've seen my phaser?")

>#There is finally a "two-armed" relative clause, but Okrand doesn't use the
>#"-'e'" prefix as we do, indicating that it is at least optional (he's
>#communicated that it was okay, though, hasn't he?).  The proverb is "Hov
>#ghajbe'bogh ram rur pegh ghajbe'bogh jaj" (a day without secrets is like a
>#night without stars).  Again, this is a proverb, and thus possibly
>#anomolous.

>Maybe, though I'd expect the unmarked (no 'e') case for relative clauses to
>be that in which the subject was the clause referent.

I'd guess even more non-restrictively: with no "-'e'" you're relying on
pragmatics.  The hearer has to guess which you mean, according to the
context and what would make the most sense.  Sure that may be asking for
trouble, but you'd be surprised at how much most languages rely on context
to disambiguate sentences (well, maybe *you* wouldn't, Nick).  We routinely
cast out ridiculous possible meanings without even thinking about it.

>#We finally have a better example for "I'm lost" than that confusing "naDev
>#jIHtaHbogh vISovbe'".  The new translation is "DaqwIj vISovbe'".  Isn't
>#that *far* cleaner?

>I find it curious that Okrand dispensed with "yIleSHa'", going for the more
>prosaic "yIleS 'e' yImev". -Ha' has some unclear semantics to it, and I
>think Okrand has missed the opportunity to do something really novel, and
>linguistically realistic in its complexity, of having a widely used -Ha'
>with a difficult-to-pin-down meaning. (That's what *real* languages call
>complexity, and let's face it, nothing in Klingon is stupefyingly complex,
>but for the eccentric phonology.)

I dunno; I'm not sure that {yIleSHa'} was the right word in the first
place.  It might mean something close to what we want, but it certainly
doesn't mean "stop relaxing"; that's {bIleS 'e' yImev} (yes, >bI<leS, Nick.
Listen again and think about it.)

>#"'uSDaj chop chev" for "bite his arm off".
>#Intersting use of "chop" *and* "chev" for "biting off".  I'm not sure what
>#the unclipped version is.  

>Evidence for verb - verb composition? I'd dearly welcome it if it was, but
>this is Clipped Klingon. Still, it's canon, and it indicates *something*.
>That question on what the unclipped for it is is intriguing...

Again, I think I have a prosodic, boring explanation.  It's {'uSDaj yIchop!
yIchev!}  "Bite his arm!  Separate it!"  I suppose that semantically or
pragmatically this is something like a verb-verb construction, in that the
second sentence modifies the first, implying that your biting should result
in separation (thus, bite it *off*), but I don't know if it's a new
syntax.  But maybe it is, and it's Okrand's answer to "separate his arm by
biting it".  I doubt it, though.  I think my first explanation makes sense.

>#There's also "Don't lick my forehead" which
>#sounds a lot like "QuchwIj DroSQo'", which represents, if I hear aright, an
>#innovation in Klingon words, as "?DroSQo'" starts with a consonant cluster.

>I suspected when I read this, and wasn't disconfirmed on listening, that the
>word is probably DeroSQo' (cf. tera'ngan, pronounced tra'ngan)

Maybe.  Then again, the way he pronounces the sounds, he'd have put in that
obscure vowel even if it really *were* {?DroSQo'}.  We also have never seen
a Klingon *verb* root that was polysyllabic before.  But given a choice
between a polysyllabic verb plus faulty pronunciation by Okrand and a
consonant-cluster initial, I think I'd rather believe the former.

>#Enjoy, folks!  More responses tomorrow, from a responsive terminal...

>'S been a month, Mark ;)

Hey, I posted a whole mess of comments on the word lists the very next day!
Weren't you listening?

>Speaking of which, congrats on your tour de force with Jonah, Mark. I'll go
>through it with interest and a fine tooth comb -- when I get TKD back ;)

I'm looking forward to it.  You should write to Kevin, Nick.  He'll need
someone with your knowledge of Greek for the NT.

~mark

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