tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Aug 23 06:04:39 1994

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Re: Duj pIm

According to Nick NICHOLAS:
> 
> ... To clarify: there are two major
> schools of linguistics at the moment; each school tends to think the other
> is a waste of time, and they don't communicate between each other two well,

The irony stops me in my tracks.

> although I suspect ultimately they do need each other. The majority school
> (at least in the US) is the formalists; it includes the Chomskian tradition.
> These linguists seek to explain language as a formal system, and are
> sympathetic to positing a language organ genetically determined in the brain;
> languages are different, because a baby's brain selects 'switch' (parameter)
> positions when it hears a language, and works out what goes where.

Am I right to take this as the "mind as brain" approach. The
mechanism must exist in order to provide the function. Language
is then the execution of a preprogrammed facility in response
to an environment.

> I'm with the functionalists, who prefer to think of language not as a formal
> system, but as a communicative resource. In particular, we seek to explain
> particular features of language, not in terms of genetics and parameters,
> but in terms of how a linguistic form best communicates a meaning. As a result,
> we tend to think less of an independent language organ, and more of how
> language fits into the patterns of cognition in general. We also
> explain linguistic change, not in terms of formal parameter alteration, but
> in terms of alternative expressions 'competing', alternative communicative
> motivations for expressions conflicting, and so on. Because they don't
> subscribe to formal theories, functionalists are more sympathetic to 
> statistical linguistics, and fuzzy-logical views of grammar. (E.g. they will
> admit shades of grey between 'noun' and 'verb').

Language, then, is more comparable to tools, once stone or
bone, then flint, then metal and now plastic. If someone comes
up with a better tool, competitive forces adopt the technique,
though, as with tools, the manufacture of competitive products
requires extensive refinement such that a new tool tends not to
spring from an individual so much as within a company that
regularly produces it. Some elements are fashion statements,
and so last but briefly, though others are fundamental to the
form and function of the tool and become long term. (Cars may
stop having fins, but they almost always have four, not five or
three, wheels.)

> (This, incidentally, is why Krankor's argumentation on the basis of 'rintaH'
> in HolQeD 3:2 is so shaky. 

I don't think ANYBODY should base ANYTHING on the use of
rIntaH. The actress portraying Valkris was speaking English on
camera and later redubbed the Klingon and Okrand came up with
rIntaH just to give her more sounds to make in order to match
the lip movements. She is literally saying what the subtitle
says she is saying IN ENGLISH. The Klingon used fewer
syllables, so Okrand gave her an extra word. Note that this is
the only use of this word or this grammatical construction in
canon.

Okrand likes this effect of the interaction between his
language and the movie environment because it makes the
language "dirtier", and therefore more like a natural language.
There are randomizing influences which screw up the neat
structures that a single-authored artificial language otherwise
tends to acquire.

> He does admit it's shaky, but as far as I'm
> concerned, it's as shaky as anything Proechel ever came up with. rIntaH
> cannot be argued on as a sentence-as-subject construct, whatever chapter
> it appears under, because it's clearly undergoing grammaticalisation (my
> PhD topic! :) ) --- it's shifting from verb to grammatical particle. 

More likely, it served its function for the problem scene with
Valkris and will never be seen again.

> As a
> result, rIntaH may tell us a lot about Klingon syntax 500 years ago, when
> it was still an independent verb which may have been functioning as a
> sentence-as-subject construct. But the same holds for verb-noun compounds
> like jolpa': they don't really say anything about *contemporary* Klingon
> syntax.)

I prefer to see both instances as atomic units. Okrand needed
words to serve functions. He made them up. He drew from earlier
words for {jolpa'} and one of them was a verb. He invented the
language, so he can do that. We can't. I suspect that {rIntaH}
was made up on the spot to fit lip movements. He made up both
the definition and grammatical justification after he matched
her lip movements. Of course, that's just my theory.

> It took me a very long time, but I've finally realised what it is about
> languages like Klingon that fascinates me, and got me into linguistics:
> the people making decisions about how to say what in these new languages
> are doing nothing but folk functionalism. The decisions on "the ship in
> which he travelled", on omitting perfectives in narrative, on rejecting
> nominalisations, are all such decisions. 

Omitting perfectives in narrative probably does not belong on
this list. That's rather strongly suggested by every source
from Okrand, that perfective is not tense and must not be used
as tense. He gets rather explicit about this on the audio
tapes. The others DO reflect decisions made here, based upon
the lack of guidance from Okrand, which perhaps may soon be
filled in something like an indirect dialog.

> They are motivated by a functionalist
> understanding of language --- that it should avoid redundancy, that possible
> ambiguities can be ruled out in practice, that certain constructs 'sound'
> better, and so on.

These are certainly the puzzles that fascinate ME about the
language.

> These functionalist instincts are partly gut feelings, and partly intellectual.
> Experience with other languages helps. But what ultimately divides Proechel
> and others, or me and others, or charghwI' and others, is conscious 
> intellectual, linguistics-motivated decision.

Of course, that is probably also what COMBINES us.

> In short, I think Guido#1 is right yet again :) .

> Nick Nicholas

charghwI'

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