tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 15 04:50:39 1994
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Re: Old post
Hu'tegh! nuq ja' Will Martin jay'?
Once again, speaking because I was spoken to/of: ;)
(Yes, I like smileys. Cope.)
;)
=DIp Delbe' "ba'" 'ej DIp tlha'laHbe' "ba'" vIjatlh. jang "Nick":
=> maj, nuq 'oHnIS DIp 'o' wot boQubmeH Saja'chuq, 'ach yajHa'ghach Dun'e'
=> ghajbogh charghwI' tI'lu''a'?
Great, you are discussing in order to think about ('e' omitted; HIvqa' blah
blah blah) what a noun-rear verb should be, but has anyone corrected the
great misunderstanding that C. has?
"Fine, you're all discussing/trying to work out what should be an adjectival
verb, but has anyone fixed the great misunderstanding that C. has?
=tlha'bogh mu'tlhegh jatlh 'e' chaq Hech "Nick":
=# DIpmey DelmeH wotmey, DIpmey tlha'laH wotmeyDaq ngaSbogh nuq
=# 'e' yajHa'qu' charghwI' 'e' vIQub.
I think C. has misunderstood what, which contains in verbs, can follow nouns,
for verbs to describe nouns.
Yeah, that's what I said ;) . But ngaS means "contains", not "is contained".
=[Lacking an equivalent of "which", I choose "what" and assume that it is
=acceptable form to say "what which is contained among verbs" to mean
="which verbs". I'm open to better suggestions.
I've always just used wot nuq, the verbs' what, by analogy to wot Hoch.
This relative clause is way too long and complex. (Again, atypical of you,
chargwI'! ;) ).
="great" rap "Dun" 'e' Sov "Nick", 'ach cha' Dochmey rur "great"
='ej wa' Doch neH rur "Dun". "QaQqu'" rur "Dun" 'ej "tInqu' rurbe' "Dun".
="wonderful" rap je "Dun". "Dun" yajHa'law' "Nick".
I suppose. What I probably meant was Doj (I don't like metaphorically extending
tIn).
=jatlhtaH "Nick":
=> taHtaHghach wot 'oH wa' wot, 'e' wuqmoHlaHbe' ghu'vam: bong mughtahghach
=> mu'Daq "BE" tu'lu'.
The following situation cannot make [one] decide that a verb is a stative:
[the fact that] accidentally there's a "be" in the translating word.
"You cannot decide that a verb is stative merely because there's a "be" in
the translation."
God. The English *is* more Klingonic than what I wrote. Another Lojbanism/
Esperantism, I suppose.
="This situation cannot cause to decide that one verb is a continuation verb:
=Accidentally in the word "BE" is found." [I find the {-moH} and {'e'}
=combination here to be quite confusing. It seems like the situation
=cannot cause the one word that is a continuation word to decide something.]
Woah. wuq also means "decide upon" (see Appendix). The object of a causative,
as Guido will recall, is up in the air; it may be either the object or subject
of the original verb. I've decided to make it consistently the object, and
put the subject in -vaD. The act that situations make one decide, rather than
decide, is a Lojbanism; we get pedantic about distinguishing agentives from
non-agentives.
=tlha'bogh mu'tlhegh jatlh 'e' chaq Hech "Nick":
=# mu'ghomDaq "be" ngaSbe'mo' neH DIvI' Hol Dop, DIp DellaHbe' wot
=# net wuqlaHbe'.
One can't decide that a verb can't describe a noun, just because the Terran
side doesn't contain "be".
Hm. Too many negatives, but yeah.
=jatlhtaH "Nick":
=> 'e' wuqmoHlaH wot HechtaHghach (meaning) pagh latlh je.
The verb's meaning, and no other [nothing else], can make one decide that.
"Only the verb's meaning can decide that [whether a verb is stative]".
=nuqjatlh? jIyajbe'chu'. jIyaj 'e' vItaghbe'. jInID:
Your confusion proves how essential commas are to Klingon ;) . I find it
interesting that you listed all possible parses but the one intended,
(wot HechtaHghach) (pagh latlh) je. The "and no other" is idiomatic in my
usage; probably another Lojbanism.
=jatlhtaH "Nick":
=> taHtaHghach wot 'oHba' "ba'", vaj DIp 'o'Daq 'oH lo'laH.
=ghIHqu' mu'tlheghvam 'e' vIQub. vIchup:
=# DIp DellaH "ba'", vaj DIp tlha'laH "ba'".
To my annoyance, you're right, your sentence is better. There's a
methodological point here; I'm not considering what verbs do as describers
of nouns, but only whether they're stative or not, which is a semantic, not
a syntactic question. But I don't suppose Klingons have much time for
methodology. ;)
="taHtaHghach" vIparqu'. moHqu' mu'vam.
Well, we won't get into this one again.
=> 'e' tembe' 'ay' 4.4.
=jIQubqu'pa' jIQochbe', 'ach DaH jIQubqa' 'ej jIQoch.
= I've concluded that "be sitting" is a quality or state of being.
="Sit" is NOT a quality or state of being. "ba'" means "sit". It does NOT
=mean "be sitting" [TKD, page 80]. It is an action. Every example
=in 4.4 involves a verb whose English definition includes the word "be".
=There are enough words in TKD with "be" in their definition to recognize the
=pattern that Okrand intended THESE words and ONLY these verbs to be used
=adjectivally.
Well, as I'd said, I think this is wrong, and near-sighted. (No insult
intended.) The concept of statives and agentives is *very* well established
in semantics, and not once has it been decided on whether the English
translation happens to contain "be" or not. It is dangerous in the extreme
to assume there is anything logical about the way English, or any other
language, divides concepts up. Your argument would conclude that "to sleep"
is agentive, whereas "to be sleeping" is stative. This should be obviously
false. The latter is merely the continuous tense of the former; sleeping is
in no way an action. (The situation with "sit" *is* different; but I find
it hard to believe the argument could be plausibly extended to "sleep")
I think we're also confusing "sit", and "sit down". "He pondered while he
sat outside the office." No "be". But also no action. This is really an
aspect distinction (a la -ta', -taH), not related to the stative issue.
There are standard references on this kind of thing, since the question of
verb types is very interesting to semanticists, but I'm going to take a
shower.
Before I do: I was a tad disspirited to find my Klingon strikes Guido as
so unAnglic it's unintelligible. It's always struck me as making lots of
sense. I guess these are the risks when you develop your own stylistics.
Guido, would you like me to post a gloss of one of the sonnets, so we could
debate where I was unclear? I'm not meant to be in the business of obfuscating
Klingonists, after all. ;)
= Furthermore, after rereading TKD 3.2.2, I think the arguement is weak
=that these adjectival verbs could be nominalized with the {-wI} suffix.
=One may be a {ba'wI'} because one "does" sit, but one cannot be a {tInwI'}
=because being big is not something one "does". It is something one "is".
All that proves is that "big" is an adjective in English, and "sit" is a
verb. "Live" is not an action, but a state, but "living" is something one
"does", not "is". (And none of this "Terrans are, Klingons do" stuff; we're
talking about English grammar.) You're basing your argument merely on
grammatical accident in English. Compare joqwI'. "Flutter" may be something
you "do", but I'd have a hard time believing it's the kind of volitional
activity you have in mind.
There's nothing alien about languages having verbs instead of adjectives,
btw. Millions of languages on Earth do; Chinese is a classic example. Given
that Okrand has done work on South-East Asian linguistics --- in fact, given
he's had a linguistic education --- he'd have hardly come up with the idea
himself. Adjectives *following* verbs isn't strange either (French does it),
and, I believe, is consistent with Klingon typology (I'd have to check this.)
There *is* an anti-"to be" bias in Klingon, but I suspect it's not as firmly
entrenched as you think. In particular, I don't believe the motivation for
placing adjectives after nouns is the one you allude to --- precisely because
it occurs so often in language.
OK, shower time.
--
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Nick Nicholas. The Nonce and Future Linguist. University of Melbourne.
[email protected]
"Henry Squirrel was thirsty. He walked over to the river bank where his good
friend Bill Bird was sitting. Henry slipped and fell in the river. Gravity
drowned." --- TALE-SPIN Story Generator, James Meehan, Yale AI Lab, 1975.