tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Apr 16 11:14:00 1996
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Re: New Method for Superlative?
>Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 09:16:07 -0700
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>According to Garrett Michael Hayes:
>>
>> And on page 121 he writes <bortaS nIvqu' bortaS'e'>, which he
>> translates as "Revenge is the best revenge".
>AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
>Qu'vatlh! Whose side is this guy on? We now have the use of a
>stative verb used transitively in a parallel construction to
>the use of pronouns with an explicit subject.
yIjotchoH!
>[The sound of charghwI''s brain being tweaked] Oh. I get it.
>Cool.
>The new part in the second example is the first use of a
>structure parallel to:
>HoD ghaH Qanqor'e'.
>While it is interesting, I see it leading to really horrendous
>things like:
>Duj tIn DujwIj'e'.
>This, of course, SHOULD be the simpler:
>tIn DujwIj.
>Meanwhile, with all the English focus on "to be", it is only a
>matter of time.
>mu'tlhegh qabqu' chovnatlhvetlh'e'.
>This specimen is a very bad sentence.
>Of course, if we ARE trying to argue that the second example is
>using {nIv} adjectivally, and so there technically is no verb
>in the sentence at all, we go back to the "Me Tarzan. You
>Jane," interpretation of the use of pronouns as verbs, since,
>despite the use of verbal suffixes, the pronoun either does not
>need to be interpreted as a verb, or it could be considered to
>be adjectivally attached to the noun we have been interpreting
>as its object. [the sound of more tweaking]
>Whatever the case, this is indeed VERY new and perhaps very
>disturbing. We live in interesting times.
I don't think it needs to be so scary. There are ways of understanding
this without postulating "Duj tIn DujwIj'e'."
For starters, consider Welsh. Welsh has a perfectly good "to be" verb,
used as a copula, at least as consistent and compulsory as English. "I
captain" makes as little sense in Welsh as it does in English.
Nonetheless, in Welsh *proverbs*, it's extremely common to find "X is Y"
constructions that leave out the verb. It's a characteristic style of
proverbs (the only example I can come up with off the top of my head:
Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon: A nation without a language [is] a
nation without a heart.) There are gobs of others. This doesn't prove
anything for Klingon, but it does show how it's conceivable for a language
to use copulae regularly and still lack them for certain styles of speech
(proverbs). (Okrand's teeth, *some*day I'll be able to remember the
literary term for leaving out a copula. I know it exists. Someday I'll be
able to keep those terms straight without having to look up "synecdoche"
all the time.)
But we can do even better than postulating grammar; we can postulate
punctuation, which is less intrusive. It's a bit of a cop-out, but not
much. What if the sentence had been something colloquial like:
>> Do we have a new mechanism for expressing superlatives?
>No. Again, "very superior" easily translates to "among the very
>best". If you really want a superlative, you still need to use
>{law'/puS} and {Hoch}.
>> 'etlhqengwI'
>>
>> Garrett Michael Hayes
>> Client/Server Labs; 8601 Dunwoody Place, Suite 332, Atlanta, GA 30350
>> [email protected], http://www.cslinc.com; 770-552-3645 voice, 770-993-4667 fax
>> (Opinions expressed are my own and may not be those of Client/Server Labs, LLC)
>>
>charghwI'
>--
> \___
> o_/ \
> <\__,\
> "> | Get a grip.
> ` |