tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 08 07:33:19 1995
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Re: Klingon martial arts
>Date: Tue, 7 Nov 1995 14:58:53 -0800
>From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
>DaQtIq writes:
>>... I believe the reasoning was that because the english transalation
>>[of {tonSaw'}] ended in -ing, that it probably was a verb.
>I think you're remembering MY reasoning, but not my conclusion.
>In english, putting "-ing" on a verb makes it a noun. While the
>word "fight" is a verb, "fighting" is a noun. "Klingon fighting"
>is a kind of fighting; also a noun.
True. If Okrand had said something like "Klingon fighting is spoken of
using the word <tonSaw'>," I might think that "tonSaw'" was a verb. But he
didn't introduce it in a sentence like that; it was introduced in a
vocabulary listing with the gloss "Klingon fighting." That's pretty
clearly noun usage to me. His brief gloss does nothing to indicate that
that it should be a verb.
>>I don't accept the justification that it just sounds odd. Since tlhIngan has
>>a different verb for to fight (Suv) and to fight dirty (HIgh), perhaps they
>>have another verb for to fight like a Klingon (tonSaw').
>A verb for "fight like a Klingon" probably would have been translated
>using the word "fight" without a suffix.
It would have had a gloss "fight like a Klingon." We don't find "HIgh"
translated as "dirty fighting," do we? We have it translated using an
infinitive verb, like all the other verbs in the lexicon. Why should
Okrand translate every single verb in the lexicon with an infinitive
*except* one, for which he uses a gerund?
~mark