tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Dec 15 07:39:21 1995

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Re: KLBC: Win 95 "Klingon-ized"



>Date: Thu, 14 Dec 1995 21:10:14 -0800
>From: "R.B Franklin" <[email protected]>

>On Mon, 11 Dec 1995, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:

>Actually, there is canon to support {-Daq} on the head noun of a relative 
>clause:  'u' SepmeyDaq Sovbe'lu'bogh lenglu'meH He ghoSlu'bogh retlhDaq 
>'oHtaH.  (DS9 trading card #99)

Hey, neat!  I though Okrand's interview had forbidden this.  But I like
it.  Thanks for pointing it out!

>The problem is not whether it is legal, but rather the ambiguity such a 
>construction can create.  In HolQeD 4.2, Okrand compared the construction 
>to the Marx Brothers joke, "I just shot an elephant in my pajamas...", 
>and said it is a joke which works in Klingon as well as in English 
>due to the dual meaning of the sentence.  (It's equally ambiguous in both 
>languages.)  He goes on to say that such ambiguity does exist in language, 
>it's not math.

>You of all people should recall this, after all, you're the one who was 
>interviewing him in that HolQeD article.

Yeah, and he did say that.  They say the mind is the first thing
to... to... what was it again?  Argh...

~mark


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