tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 15 05:36:59 1994
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Old post
- From: Captain Krankor <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Old post
- Date: Tue, 15 Feb 94 16:32:27 -0700
>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.
To be sure, I do not recall Okrand ever claiming to have invented
any of Klingon's structures himself, per se. I've heard him speak
on the subject and he freely admits that he would take a little from
one thing and a little from another, some chinese here, some
native american languages there, and so on. While he may have put
his own spin on them, and we cannot necessarily expect to find an
exact mapping, 1 to 1, between Klingon elements and terran language
elements, it is certainly so that he did not devise this stuff out
of thin air. I also completely agree with the above comment on the
anti-"to be" bias. It exists, but it is hardly vehement.
Incidentally, I've always rather prefered the adjective-following-verb
construction, having encountered it in French. It really is more
logical and efficient, particularly when you start stacking up
multiples. If I say: "the big, green, ugly, sharp-toothed, hungry,
drooling, spotted...", you're left sitting there going WHAT? What
IS it! You have to store up and remember all those adjectives, not
yet knowing what to apply them to. Yes, yes, I know, natural
languages aren't supposed to be efficient, and there's nothing wrong
with languages like English that don't do it that way, but, still I
can laud efficiency when I find it.
--Krankor