tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Dec 06 23:06:19 1994
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qech DImech
>Date: 94-12-06 18:49:03 EST
>From: [email protected] (William H. Martin)
[...]
>This kind of Klingon literature commonly comes from beginners
>because the focus tends to be on getting the English to Klingon
>without a lot of attention being paid to what it is like to
>forget the process and secret keys that went into creating the
>Klingon, then trying to understand what was said. I am less
>interested in copping a patronizing attitude than I am in
>focusing on what can help you write better Klingon in the
>future. In particular, it is important to be able to clearly
>read what you have written in Klingon WITHOUT ANY REFERENCE TO
>MEMORIES OF HOW YOU GOT TO THE FINISHED TEXT. You have to read
>what you have written as if somebody else wrote it, and this is
>the first time you have ever seen it, with no context besides
>the text itself.
Hu'tegh majQa'! qanaD, qanaD! batlh vuD quvqu' DaDelmeH qarqu' mu'lIj.
It is indeed highly important, as charghwI' states here, to write in such a
style that it makes sense to others who read it *without* an English
back-translation. I see this as an ultimate goal of Klingonists. It is fun to
do all those cutesy things in Klingon, to toy around with it (e.g., Big Ben =
"LondonDaq ben'a'), but in the long run, someone who wants to be serious
about it should always seek improvement until it no longer seems necessary to
provide an English version to properly express your idea. When your idea
comes out clearly and concisely in tlhIngan Hol, independently of English
altogether, then you are on your way. Where to? you may ask. Well, just find
out for yourself.
ghochlIjDaq Hoch DapIHlaHbe'pu'bogh Datu'bejmo' reH yISuvrupqu'.
>> kinda like saying "well, dad, i *kinda* got a speeding ticket today." by
>> using {neH} in your sentence, you remove its importance, and thus remove
>> importance of the entire sentence. (imesho.)
>Interesting. I always interpreted it to mean "merely", which is
>a little different from your interpretation. Both fulfill
>Okrand's "trivializing the action", though the connotations are
>different. I'd be interested in what others think about this.
Here's my take: {neH}, as Okrand describes it, trivializes the verb it
follows, and specifies the noun it follows as being exclusive in a random
group of other nouns. In other words, {neH} is the verbal equivalent of
{-Hom}, so to say. Being the only adverbial able to also modify nouns, it's
odd. But after nouns, it really doesn't trivialize. Rather, it is said to set
the noun apart from all other nouns, as in, "Only this one noun, and no
others." Probably the two meanings are closely tied. Okrand's example of the
verbal usage, {yIQotlh neH} "Just disable it," indeed trivializes the action,
but actually has the effect of really meaning, "Only disable the ship, and do
nothing more," which would be the same semantic value as the noun usage, if
you catch my drift.
Also in this post of charghwI's to which I'm now responding he took up to
explain how he looked at {-lu'} in his clarification of another person's
apparently erroneous usage of that suffix. His clarification was fine, per
se, but his expressed views on {-lu'} did not click with my own, and so
rather than respond to his words directly, I've taken up to explain my own
views on {-lu'} in an attempt to ascertain just how our views diverge and
what possible new insight we may exchange concerning the suffix {-lu'}.
{-lu'} is often looked at as passive. But it turns out to be fundamentally a
different suffix altogether. The greatest indicator of this is that it's
grammar is different. I believe that it's semantic value differs from passive
to an extent which charghwI' does recognize. But I'll proceed to explain.
The two of us agree that {-lu'} is not passive, due to its grammatical
nature. How's that? Well, the reason people look at it as passive is because
the prefix gets flopped (for lack of a better word) and {-lu'} therefore has
close grammatical ties to the object, or perhaps just the prefix. But one
canonical example in particular seems to shatter this concept: {quSDaq
ba'lu''a'} (with very obvious typos weeded out). No object is present here,
not even an implied one. In fact, {ba'} is intransitive. This indicates to us
(some of us, anyways) that {-lu'} merely indicates indefinite subject, while
having nothing to do with the object at all, especially when the prefix is
{0}. The weirdness we observe with the prefix is only a matter to be dealt
with when a verb with {-lu'} has an object.
[One quick note here: The possible reasons for why the prefix is changed has
been discussed off the list by ~mark, Legend, and myself, at one time. I plan
to write an article for HolQeD on this and other very intriguing things
someday when Hamlet is all done. I hadn't yet corresponded with either of
them on this, but I had planned to, in case they're wondering.]
I could now conclude that {-lu'} indicates indefinite subject and has no real
semantic tie to the object. In my personal opinion, it is best translated by
the English indefinite subject "one" or "someone."
{po'lu'meH qeqnISlu'} "One must practice to be skilled."
{malja' Haqlu'} "Someone transacts business."
Even tho people may know that {-lu'} has nothing to do with the object, their
heavily English mindset may bring them to use {-lu'} similar to the English
passive, such as thinking of words like {tI'lu'} as "it is repaired." However
I don't believe that this view is accurate because, as I said before and as
is widely known already, {-lu'} has nothing to do with the object
semantically, but everything to do with being an indicator of indefinite
subject. {tI'lu'} means "someone repairs." If you wanted to say "it is
repaired," then {'oH tI'lu'} is appropriate, imesho.
There is another aspect of {-lu'} that makes it different from passive voice.
Passive voice (and all other voices for that matter) are used simply to get
rid of the agent of the sentence and turn the patient into the subject.
[Before I go futher, here's a quick note to all normal people who are not hip
to the linguistic terminology: the semantic structure of an English sentence
is AGENT-VERB-PATIENT. The agent is the one who acts, and the patient is the
one who is acted upon. Subject and object are simply grammatical terms, not
semantic ones.] Why do we use passive? When I say "it is repaired," I do not
say who repairs because I feel that information is obvious or unimportant.
But nothing in the construction tells the hearer that I'm getting rid of the
agent. I am implicitly making it implicit. When I say {'oH tI'lu'}, I do not
mention {tI'wI'} because I feel that it is unimportant or that information is
unknown. But the fact that I'm explicitly making it implicit makes it obvious
to the hearer that I don't want to say it. {'oH tI'lu'} means "someone
repairs it," and if I say that after context has already indicated {tI'wI'},
it seems highly awkward.
{la': Qapbe'mo' jolvoy', 'oH qanobta'}
{jIH: 'oH tI'lu'} <weird>
"Comm: The transporter ionizer unit didn't work, so I had given it to you."
"I: Someone fixed it."
This would of course make sense if we think of {tI'lu'} as "it is repaired,"
but I've already explained why I believe it does not mean that. In the above
example, I explicitly made {tI'wI'} implicit. But since context had already
made it obvious that it was *I* who fixed it, there was no reason to use
{-lu'} or "someone." On the other hand, had I been speaking Fed Standard and
said, "it's repaired," I would just be leaving out the agent *because* it was
already obvious.
Fed Standard uses the passive in this way a lot. There also cultural
connotations behind the use of voice. Klingon ideals of communication would
tend away from the avoidance of expressing information that is known anyways.
A person who leaves out certain information does so if that knowledge is
lacking from his own knowledge, or he is purposely avoiding confession of
some information because it is socially improper or embarassing to himself or
the hearer. Malagasy, a language spoken on Madagascar, has one of the most
advance voice systems in the world. Why? Because of the conveyance of
information within their cultural and social environment. If a person can
leave out certain information from his sentence, then he can avoid saying
certain things for fear of embarassment (a sign of weakness among Klingons)
or perhaps he wants to drag out the conversation, which the use of passive
voice often does because the hearer then may want to know the information
that the speaker had just purposely left out. This diminishes conciseness
(another bad sign among Klingons).
Other comments? Views? Even more general pandemonious jabber?
Guido