tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Apr 19 07:30:44 1996
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Phonology and surroundings (including copula)
- From: Consulat General de Pologne <#[email protected]>
- Subject: Phonology and surroundings (including copula)
- Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 10:30:00 EDT
Yesterday I could't fall asleep as I was thinking all the time about Klingon
phonology. And I came out to a conclusion, that there is something more
special to {-'} than what I have written before.
TKD p. 16: "Occasionally the echo is quite audible, with a guttural sound
like {gh} preceeding the echoed vowel. Fo example {yIlI'} "transmit it!"
^^^^^^^^^
can sound more like {yIlI'ghI}. This extra-heavy echo is heard most
often when the speaker is particularly excited or angry."
toH!
Wow! Don't you realise that this would be the only case of a voiceless
stop that when voiced changes also the place of articulation from
glottal into guttural?
I always supposed there is something special about {'}. Duj tIvoqtaH!
Of course this "new" {gh} is only like the old {gh} we already know.
I would prefer to write this new sound as {'gh}.
And so I come to a conclusion (a hypothesis) that maybe {rgh} is in fact
not a cluster of {r} + {gh} but a cluster of {r} + {'gh} i.e. voiced {-'}.
(The second hypothesis I take into consideration is that {rgh} is a phoneme
of its own and not a cluster at all).
As the only native speaker of Klingon is MO (reH yINjaj! 'ej reH najtaHvIS
qeylIS ghomjaj!) we must hear attentively to his pronounciation.
I shall try to do it in the beginning of May.
Now I will be out and not able to answer the mail for more than a week.
I shall read all the incoming mail (the digests of tlh.H. included)
on the 30th of April.
As the proverb says: "Sl/uz.ba nie druz.ba!" juH oHbe' toy'ghach'e'.
(remember - I put the Polish diacritical marks after the
letter on which they should stand so {l/} is {l stretched} and
{z.} is {z with a dot above} and {a,} is {a with an "ogonek",
a kind of Polish and Lithuanian inversed "cedille"}.
This proverb doesn't contain a copula at all [not even this special
type of "copula-like" use of pronoun "to"]. This is evidently
a Russicism in Polish (the word "druz.ba" for "friendship" instead
of "przyjaz'n'" is evidently Russian or Ruthenian) - Russian
doesn't have a copula at all in present tense:
"Ya chelovyek" = I [am] a man. (predicate "man" is in Nominative case)
but in the past and future they use a copula of "to be" with the Instrumental
case construction:
"Ya byl chelovyekom" = I was a man.
"Ya budu chelovyekom" = I will be a man.
(but this last remark comletely changes the subject of the posting).
Qapla'
macheq
-----------------------
macheq noychoH jembatoQ
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