tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Feb 17 00:50:35 1994
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Re: 'mean'
charghwI' asks about my attempts to express 'to mean':
>> For some uses of the English verb "to mean" we can use jatlhlu':
>> 1. ghot nuv jatlhlu'
>> literally, 'one says nuv [as] ghot'.
> Interesting. I've never seen this construction before. Could you point
>it out to me in canon?
Uhh... no. As the White Knight said, "It's my own invention."
>It looks more like a noun-noun conjuction, in which case it becomes "The
>{ghot}'s {nuv} is spoken." I don't think that is your intent.
No, it's not. I hadn't thought of that possible misinterpretation. I think
that in speech, intonation would make the difference clear, and in writing
punctuation could indicate that, which is part of punctuation's function:
"ghot" "nuv" jatlhlu'
> The way I have come to express this is {ghot nuv je rap}. If they are
>nearly the same, but not quite, I'll use {rur} instead.
But you still have the problem of distinguishing the word from the referent.
Does "ghot nuv je rap" mean "the person[ghot] and the person[nuv] are the
same"? It'll need intonation or quotation marks.
>> Compare such sentences as
>> 2. Qanqor Hodma' ponglu'
>> literally, 'one calls our captain Krankor', which I believe is an
>> accepted structure.
> Same problem. "Our captain of Krankor is called."
Umm, yeah.
>Perhaps we could again say {Qanqor HoDma' je rap} or to stretch things a bit,
>{Qanqor 'oH HoDma' pong}. I'm not wild about the construction, but it seems
>to have examples in canon.
OK, but you need -'e' in the 2nd form, "Qanqor 'oH HoDma' pong'e'". And I
don't think that's stretching things at all; but I'm less than happy with it
because it seems verbose. When there's no explicit subject the verb is easy
to use: "marqem jIponglu' 'ej charghwI' bIponglu'."
Maybe we can use -'e' to untie this knot of naming: "Qanqor'e' HoDma'
ponglu'", using -'e' per 3.3.5 to emphasize that the name is the topic of the
sentence. And coming between the nouns, it reduces the likelihood that
someone will mistake them for a N-N construction. (But looking at the whole
sentence, who would take it that way even without the -'e'? The verb "pong"
implies the use of a name.)
>> 3. DIvI' Federation jatlhlu'
> Here, I would DEFINITELY say {DIvI' Federation je rap}.
>> although one can always say
>> 4. Federation mugh DI'vI'
> I doubt it. "The DI'vI' translates the Federation." That's not really
>what you want. {mugh} doesn't mean "is translated as".
Intonation/punctuation again.
> In particular, I'm dissappointed that Okrand chose to use {pong} as the
>verb "name, call" instead of "be named, called". The latter would have made
>things profoundly more versatile. Then if you wanted to say that you named
>your pet, you could use {pongmoH} to get the same function as the current
>verb, while the REST of the time, the constructions would be simpler.
qaQochbe', 'a DuH nuq? (I.e., what to do [about it]?)
> But that didn't happen. I still suggest {rap} and {rur}.
I guess I want to distinguish equality/similarity of MEANING from
equality/similarity of THING, and so I'm unhappy with "rap"/"rur".
In an intervening post I thought of and proposed
qech nuq ngaS
literally "what idea does it contain?" for "what does it mean?"
- marqem
Mark A. Mandel
Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
320 Nevada St. : Newton, Mass. 02160, USA : [email protected]