tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Aug 23 22:19:39 1994
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Re: Duj pIm
nIchyon jangbogh charghwI' jang ghuy'Do wa''e':
>> (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.
That it doesn't appear anywhere else in canon doesn't mean squat to me.
Okrand takes less advantage of his child-language's expressive power than
anyone else who comes to mind. He has never used {-'e'} other than where it
was mandatory, for example. Plenty of grammatical constructions and
vocabulary have appeared only once in canon. Plenty more have never occured
at all.
I personally like the dramatic connotations carried by the particle {rIntaH}.
It came about as a result of backfit; but we don't condemn other grammar and
vocab who owe their existence to backfit, do we?
>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.
Absolutely. The backfitting provides the language with a richness otherwise
unachieved by other PLs (Planned Languages). BTW, does anyone know of any
other PLs which were purposely created with natural irregularities? I don't
know much of Tolkien languages. Can someone enlighten me?
>> 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.
toH 'oH tu'qa'lu'bej 'ach lo'qa'be'chugh *'oQaD* [Okrand] vaj ram. pIj
mu'Homvam vIlo' jIH'e' lI'qu'mo' 'oH.
Speaking of grammaticalization, the German {bitte} comes from the first
person singular of the verb for "request, plead". It is in modern German a
simple adverbial particle, whereas it used to be a whole phrase {ich bitte
Sie} "I beg you", which became so common within sentences that it is now an
adverbial.
>> 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.
lughlaw' ngervam.
Of course, later in ST3, the Klingon commander uttered {qama'pu' jonta' neH}.
This originally was to be subtitled "I told you engines only," but with the
subtitle change, we now have {ja'} instead of {ma'} for "tell", an unusual
CVCVC for "prisoner", and one odd disyllable for "engine". Before this,
Okrand had intended {-mey} for all plurals, but to this backfit, the facts
that the sentient plural {-pu'} even exists at all, and that it is identical
to the perfective, owe their existences. Think of how drab it would be if we
had only {-mey}. Backfit has here greatly enriched the language.
(NB, this info was something I read sometime soon after I joined the list
almost a year ago. I don't remember the source at all. Despite its
questionable validity, it does sound quite nice, doesn't it? But you get my
point: backfit has enriched the language! No dispute there, I think.)
>> 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.
We're observing some very interesting phenomena here indeed. It's only a
matter of time before a true Klingon stylistic form develops, as it already
has to some degree with these 'decisions', which is just how natural
languages develop their own stylistics, albeit unconsciously. It's all
according to popular conventions and what the language structure best
supports.
Btw, while the written form of tlhIngan Hol is flourishing quite wonderfully,
the spoken form is still in shambles for the most part. We can alter that!
Send all your tapes to me now for compilation and redistribution and get
tlhIngan Hol jatlhqu'lu'bogh off the ground! (<--obvious sales pitch for
KATE)
>> 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
intellectua
l.
>> 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 :) .
I knew tha--- I mean, why thank you very much.
>> Nick Nicholas
>charghwI'
Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos