tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Sep 08 10:55:14 1994
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Re: KLBC: Blood of the vanquished
Hu'tegh! nuq ja' R.B Franklin jay'?
=On Wed, 7 Sep 1994, Nick NICHOLAS wrote:
=> Hu'tegh! nuq ja' R.B Franklin jay'?
=Would I translate that as, "Dammit! What the hell did R.B. Franklin say?"
Yeah, I'll accept that. :) (Pace charghwI', I don't think this would be
regarded in Klingon circles as 'the opposite extreme', but your mileage may
vary.
About the usage of -'e' to disambiguate head nouns in relative clauses:
according to my stats, it varies. Some (like me) use it almost obligatorily.
Others, like Guido and charghwI', use it rarely.
=> =I also didn't understand Mr. Nicholas's statements about topic
=> =constructions. In what context would {verengan'e' pu' vIngev} replace
=> ={verenganvaD pu' vIngev}?
=You previously indicated that you wanted to use {verengan'e' pu' vIngev}
=to mean "As for the Ferengi, I sold [him] the phaser." But
=unfortunately, that sentence already means "I sell the FERENGI's phaser."
={-'e'}, in this sentence, only serves to emphasize whose phaser you are
=selling.
As Mark pointed out, according to TKD that interpretation of the noun-noun
compound is ungrammatical.
=I don't know much about topicalisation as well, but I do know a lot
=about Japanese grammar.
Cool!
=But comparing Japanese grammar with Klingon is comparing apples with
=astroids. The structure of a Klingon sentence is object-verb-subject.
=The grammatical relation of a word to the rest of the sentence is
=determined by the word order, and the word order in Klingon is rather
=rigid.
Well, let me say what I think happened:
* From the description in TKD and what little I know of topicalisation,
-'e' is intended as the equivalent of Japanese -wa. Okrand drops extremely
heavy hints to that effect. (Topicalisation is how Western linguists describe
Japanese -wa, and when translating it, they always say things like "It was
the Ferengi who...")
* But Klingon word order is, as you say, rigid.
* Position serves to identify whether a noun is subject or direct object;
suffix serves to identify whether it is an oblique object. The suffix -'e'
can be used to indicate that something is both topic and subject, or topic
and object. But Klingon morphology doesn't allow us to indicate that something
is both oblique object and topic.
* We have only seen topics in subject and direct object position.
* English does not delete prepositions in its 'topicalisations'. "It is the
Ferengi that I sold the phaser *to*". Thus we are unaccustomed to the
situation where it is not indicated that something is both oblique object
and topic.
* Therefore we are unlikely to read verengan'e' pu' vIngev as Ferengi-wa
phaser-o I-sell (Could you supply a better translation? Thanks.)
* Therefore, in effect, Klingon topicalisation has degenerated to a
focalisation: a mere emphatic, as you've describe it. I do not think Okrand
intended this; although I could be wrong, I doubt it, because of...
* Therefore the evidence given by "HaqwI''e' DaH yISam", that -'e' is a
topicaliser after all, has been ignored.
* Therefore Klingon as used has moved beyond its prescription --- something
I tend to regard as a good thing, although this is not as widespread a
sentiment as I like to delude myself. :-)
--
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Nick Nicholas. Linguistics, University of Melbourne. [email protected]
[email protected] [email protected]
AND MOVING REAL SOON NOW TO: [email protected]