tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Sep 01 14:58:42 1995
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Re: Re[2]: }} jIjot 'ej jIQuch
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Re[2]: }} jIjot 'ej jIQuch
- Date: Fri, 1 Sep 1995 14:58:42 -0400
>From: [email protected]
>Date: Thu, 31 Aug 95 12:34:29 EST
>On Thu, 31 Aug 1995 ~mark wrote:
>>><bang vIHot> jal ghotpu'
>>
>>>(That's the closest I could get to, "People will say you're in love.")
>>
>>I don't think I can accept this. Well, let's start with one small point of
>>confusion: I don't see "jal" anywhere. What is it?
>My fault. It was supposed to be <ja'>
>>Maybe it's missing from my lookup. I presume it means "say, gossip" (joS?),
>Can <joS> be used as "say"? (Or are you trying to put a meaning to my typo?)
It's iffy; I was trying to guess at your typo.
>>So "Hot" to me seems to be the physical act of touching something, or to
>>feel something *in the sense* of putting your finger on it to determine
>>what it feels like. It doesn't seem to be "to sense internally" (lolAad in
>>lAadan, a very useful word).
>What are you talking about? Is that another language?
Yes, a constructed language invented by Suzette Hayden Elgin. The verb
"lolAad" means "to percieve internally." It's what you do with emotions,
which are nouns in lAadan (I use a capital A to stand for an a with an
accent on it, which is pronounced with a high tone in lAadan).
>>I've often wished for a good word for lolAad
>>in Klingon, but the closest we have to me seems to be "SIQ", which, I must
>>admit, has a certain appeal to it. Or maybe "bech".
>Hmm, had some bad loves hunh? :-)
Heh. It's sort of the imagined Klingon perspective: life isn't just
experienced, it's *endured*.
>>Similarly, we (as opposed to Glen Proechel, who has decided to interpret
>>things differently) have generally understood "bang" to be a *person*, not
>>an emotion. That is "bang" means "love, *as in* my love, the person who is
>>loved" and not "love" the abstract emotion. Note the canon use, where
>>valQIS calls whatsisname (Qugh?) "bangwI'"/my love.
>Hadn't heard that before.
It's pretty much the standard meaning that the KLI has settled on, absent
any better ideas, based on the gloss given (the glosses taken to be
explanatory rather than additive, as I said). The canon is in STIII or
something, I'm not much good with quotes. But it's just before he blows up
valQIS and the aliens she's with because she's seen the Genesis
information. He asks if she's seen the information (vaj Daleghpu''a'?),
she says she has, and he says "Do'Ha'." She answers "jIyaj. Qapla',
joHwI', banwI' je" (Success, my lord and my love).
>>Maybe "bang Daghaj net Har"/it will be believed that you have a beloved. I
>>like the way that uses "net" (that's really what you wanted with your
>>"ghotpu'", if you think about it, I think), but it stretches "ghaj" a
>>little. Then again, "ghaj" is already pretty stretched.
>Since I'm quoting a song lyric, I'd still rather have people in there somewhere.
>How about
>bang Daghaj 'e' Harqang ghotpu'.
>(People are willing to believe you have a beloved.)
>or
>bang Daghaj 'e' joSqang ghotpu'
>(People are willing to gossip that you have a beloved.)
>I have a feeling something is wrong here. Gossip can't take an object. Can
><joS> be translated as "gossip about"? (I don't think it can.) If not, what can
>you do for prepositions? (Just avoid them, right?)
I like both of those, tho I think "net" works better for "people in
general"; when you translate, after all, you translate MEANINGS, not
words.
Well, the thing is, prepositions are overrated. Basically, one way to view
a sentence (and a pretty standard way at that) is to consider it to be a
statement of relationship among one or more (possibly no) "things"
(nouns). The verb indicates the relationship. The relationship is like a
function, taking in some number of parameters. Each noun in the sentence
fills some role in the relationship, but the roles in general are not
interchangeable. So in "eat", you have the role of eater and the role of
eatee. We are pleased to call these the subject and the object,
respectively, and in English we mark which thing goes in which role by
placement. In some languages they mark by case-ending, but it amounts to
the same thing: one thing is considered the "subject" and one the "object"
and they are so marked. Prepositions are a way to expand our set of these
slots a little more. They can be used to add arguments to a verb that
ordinarily doesn't take them, like adding a place for "location" to the
verb "eat" (as in "I eat the cake IN the bedroom", using "in" to supply an
added case). Things tend to develop to a point where you actually get
verbs which by rights should be considered transitive, but whose objects
happen not to be in the normal "accusative" case that most objects go in.
Like "participate." Leaving aside the intransitive usage (which is really
the transitive one with an unspecified object), "participate" is really a
transtive verb. You can't reall say "I participate" without at least
implying that there's something you participate IN. So why don't we say "I
participate the meeting"? Because English is weird, and sees fit to
declare that the object of "participate" be governed by "in." But in what
way is "the meeting" any less the "object" of "participate" than "cake" is
the object of "eat"?
Klingon has very few preposition-analogues, and the ones it has are very
restricted. It stands to reason that a language which makes very limited
use of prepositions would not develop the habit of using them to flag what
really are normal objects most of the time. So I'd say that you would say,
in Klingon, "qep vIjeS": the meeting is the OBJECT of "jeS." So it's not
so much that you ignore the prepositions, but you leave them out when they
don't really make sense in the first place. If you like, consider "jeS" to
be "participate [in]."
Now, joS is probably less clear. Maybe it isn't "obvious" that the object
of gossip has to be what's gossiped about. Personally, I'm inclined to
accept that it is. Or perhaps it should be considered a verb of speech and
drop the "'e'" altogether, making it a direct quote (not too bad in English
either: People will gossip, "You're in love").
>BTW, what's the difference between 'e' & net?
An easy way to think of them, and probably pretty close to correct:
<whatever> 'e' X-lu' == <whatever> net X
So "net" is just like "'e'" except it also means that the subject of the
main clause is indefinite or "folks in general."
~mark