tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Aug 27 03:53:43 1994
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Re: Duj pIm
Hu'tegh! nuq ja' [email protected] jay'?
=charghwI' jangbogh nIchyon jang ghuy'Do wa''e':
=>rintaH, like I said, is classic grammaticalisation --- and one could
=envisage
=>a scenario like this:
=>1. Hegh ghaH. rIntaH wanI'.
=>2. Hegh ghaH. rIntaH.
=>3. Hegh rIntaH ghaH.
=>4. Hegh rItlh ghaH.
=>5. HeghrItlh ghaH.
=Plausible theory. I could see 1-3 happening, but if the process is to
=continue to 5, it will be extremely gradual, since {-ta'} still takes popular
=precedence in normal usage.
Well, the change is by no means *necessary*, because -ta' is there. But the
thing with these changes is they tend to roller-coaster. Several things could
happen; not the least of which is that rIntaH could (in 200 years or so) end
up being a real tense, as opposed to aspect, system. Such a change has been
documented for Semitic languages, although the auxiliaries it involved were
the more usual "have" and "be". In fact, the change to 3 is not neccesary
either, because of -ta', but it has already happened. But as you've noted:
there's already a difference in connotation between ta' and rIntaH ---
emphasising purpose and irrevocability, respectively. It's reasonable to
expect this change would keep getting expanding on (if Klingon was a 'real'
language). The consequences of this expansion can be far-reaching.
=(our
=comparative/superlative construction is also quite bizarre-- Klingon grammar
=does not have the perfect symmetrical shape of Esperanto or Classical Latin
=or some such language, and it thus resembles a natural language).
Um, hate to say this (and I already have), but the Klingon comparative is
just standard American Indian; and I'm sure some Amerindian languages are
as symmetrical as Latin. I think you mean there's lots of *inconsistent*
bits of grammar in Klingon? That may well be so; Klingon has bits and pieces
from a wide variety of languages; you wouldn't mistake it for Cherokee or
Navajo. A typological description of Klingon would be a nice 10,000 word
essay topic for an undergrad out there :)
=If you still have a hard time with {rIntaH} or {taH} going from a position at
=the end of a sentence to immediately after the verb, well, look at {qar'a'}
=in indirect questions, where the position is variable.
And the moment qar'a' moves to after the verb, you know it's setting itself
up in competition with -'a' itself.
=It might have something to do with the fact that the subject is the only noun
=that can go after the verb, and implicit subjects are so common. In practical
=usage, Klingons may put elements like {rIntaH} or {qar'a'} at the end of
=their sentences, but so often sentences end in verbs, that they may begin to
=think of these elements as parts of the verb, and thus make a hypercorrection
=in putting the subject after both the verb and this new element.
You're good at this, Guido! :) Indeed, that's how the reanalysis that starts
these things off happens:
chegh ghaH. rIntaH.
chegh. rIntaH.
(reanalysed to)
chegh rIntaH.
(which then allows)
chegh rIntaH ghaH.
A lot of change in syntax happens because people reanalyse sentences in this
way, and generalise from there. That's the nuts & bolts of the
grammaticalisation process; if it weren't for that kind of syntactic ambiguity,
verbs would never turn into grammatical particles.
It'll be interesting to see what Okrand says about -ghach. I'm not sure,
though, if it'll make any difference in usage. Those who have avoided it
(including me, and indeed most expert Klingonists --- or charghwI''ists :) )
will continue avoiding it, whatever Okrand says, after all.
--
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Nick Nicholas. Linguistics, University of Melbourne. [email protected]
[email protected] [email protected]
AND MOVING SOON TO: [email protected]