tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jan 30 09:03:20 1996
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
language
- From: [email protected] (Beau Bierhaus)
- Subject: language
- Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 10:03:00 -0700 (MST)
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> from "Mark E. Shoulson" at Jan 29, 96 01:12:35 pm
>From the keyboard of Mark E. Shoulson
> I don't buy that Klingon has to be be maximally different from existing
> languages (if Okrand REALLY wanted an alien language, like nothing on
> Earth, he'd have made one. Klingon isn't all that unique). Krankor may
> disagree with me on this, but to me, the fact that languages do something
> one way does not constitute support that Klingon doesn't. Nor necessarily
> that it does.
>
> ~mark
Hmmm, I think this is very interesting and (somewhat) ties into another
thread making its rounds on this list: how children learn a language.
Jerry Fodor (who is more of a philosopher/neural psychologist than a
linguist) wrote a book, _The Language of Thought_, based on the idea
that ALL human beings have an inate language hardwired into their brain.
(For those of you who may know his work in greater detail, forgive and
correct me if I butcher this too badly.) In other words, Nature provided
us with an internal syntax over which a spoken language lies. Now, the
question is, how might this relate to Klingon?
It seems to me that our best guess about *any* intellegent form of
communication is that it must have some kind of syntax, even nonverbal language.
Consider body langauge of both human beings and animals/ insects, particularly
bees. There has to be some common ground on which two beings can communicate.
One (or maybe it's just me) can extrapolate that the same is true for
alien languages, be they spoken, written, danced, or some other form that
we can't begin to recognize as communication. Syntax must be a property of
communication, just as conducting electricty is a property of copper.
This is indeed the case in Klingon, for Okrand has conveniently provided
a fairly sophisticated language for us to study. Thus, I agree that when
a human language works a particular way, this does not automatically indicate
that Klingon is the opposite, or at least completely different. After all,
human beings and Klingons are both (relatively) bright species. At least
the Klingons are.
The point of this tirade is that I think the Klingon "base" syntax
is probably not too dissimilar from ours -- thus their resulting language,
while not the same, can still be discussed in very Terran terms as "object,
verb, subject". The more subtle differences, transitivity or what not,
become different because of the small discrepancies in the fundamental, hard
wired, syntax.
Hope this hasn't been too irrelevant.
-Beau
--
| Beau Bierhaus ([email protected]) |