tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Sep 17 19:08:10 1996
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Re: Star Trek Communicator (was Re: KLBC question)
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Star Trek Communicator (was Re: KLBC question)
- Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 22:08:02 -0400 (EDT)
- In-reply-to: <[email protected]>
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>Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 14:27:36 -0700
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>On Tue, 10 Sep 1996 07:33:46 -0700 "Mark E. Shoulson"
><[email protected]> wrote:
>Seqram vIvuvbej, 'ach jabbI'IDvam vIparqu' 'ej jIjangDI' jIyuDHa'nIS, 'ej
>HoDwI' vIHubnIS.
>..
>> >archives <<tamey ngo'>>
>>
>> Excellent! Thanks very much, Glen/Ken (and of course Marc), for settling
>> something I've disagreed with Krankor about for a while. I had been saying
>> that "ngo'" is the opposite of "chu'" like "qan" is the opposite of "Qup."
>> That is, people and living things who have lived a long time are qan, but
>> an object that isn't new (or at least isn't new to someone in some aspect)
>> is ngo'. It's the same difference as malnova/maljuna in Esperanto, and
>> yashan/zaqen in Hebrew. I'm pretty sure Glen thought the same, as did many
>> people.
>>
>> Krankor disagreed (perhaps due to his fresh perspective, since he doesn't
>> have quite the same linguistic training as some others, and isn't hampered
>> by what to "expect" to see).
>This is an undeserved slam that does not deserve to go unanswered.
>Mostly, it is irrelevant, since the difference between the various types
>of "old" have nothing to do with "fresh perspective" or "linguistic
>training" when working with a specific language. Any statistician will
>tell you that if you flip a normal coin fifty times and it comes up heads
>every time, on the fifty-first flip, the odds are exactly 50/50 that it
>will be heads or tails. Especially with a fictitious language built by
>someone trying to be as alien as he can within practical constraints,
>applying generalizations from other languages is very nearly useless,
>since it all comes down to what mood Marc Okrand is in when he faces this
>particular point. Of all people, I did not expect ~Mark to come at
>something from this angle.
Slam? What slam? Oh no. On the contrary, this was a compliment to
Krankor, and indeed comes from the same angle you are.
See, Krankor's linguistic training *does* differ from mine, and d'Armond's,
and quite a few other people's. It is not an insult, but simply the case
that he's done less formal studying of languages and linguistics, at least
until Klingon came along (though I'm pretty sure he can still whip me at
French). As you say, when you are dealing with an alien language, you
can't count on generalizations from other, existing languages. And this is
*precisely* where Krankor's perspective is useful. What I said was that
because of his different training, he wasn't likely to be blinded by
preconceived notions of what "should" be in the language, as I was. My
assumptions about ngo':qan :: chu':Qup were based on my studies of other
languages which did things this way. This is the wrong way to go about
things, as you correctly notice. Krankor didn't have the baggage in his
mind that I had in mine, and came up with another explanation which I
would never have seen. He saw it because of his "fresh perspective" (said
not sarcastically, but honestly), and I missed it because of my own
preconceptions.
Do not presume sarcasm when honesty is also possible.
>Was Okrand tired and decided just to let this be like other languages?
>Was he mischevious and wanted to make this an arbitrary exception (like
>the color breakdown)? Was he too busy and decided not to make a decision
>at this point? Until we hear from him or get indisputable examples or
>description, we can't tell if a generalization is applicable or not.
Who knows? It looks to me like he decided to make Klingon work like other
languages here, based on this example and also based on the gloss (even
after hearing Krankor's explanation and having my eyes opened to his
reading, I didn't agree with him. That is to be expected in discussions of
scholars. The gloss looked to say one thing to me and another to him. I
couldn't prove myself right (nor did I try) because as you say, it could be
either way: this is an alien language). That's Okrand's perogative. It
looks to Krankor like something else happened: that's his. It looks to
you like it's still up in the air. That's probably the course that's
easiest to agree with.
>> He believed that "qan" meant "old" just as in
>> English: for people and things alike, being the opposite of both chu' and
>> Qup. (See his "exam" story in HolQeD, in which he refered to "nav qan" for
>> "old paper.") As for "ngo'", he said it meant "old" in the sense of
>> *former* (as in the old president, not to be confused withthe current
>> one). It's not the "new" one, but the one that was there before. Me, I
>> didn't buy it, but I had no canon.
>Meanwhile, I see the two interpretations as being arbitrary, with only
>one potential source of confirmation.
Like I said: I didn't have canon. Neither did he. Stalemate (though I
don't like viewing such discussions as battles that are won and lost;
that's not a constructive perspective). We each had to accept the other's
explanation as possible but unproven, as you do. And we did.
>> Now I have. Calling archives "former records" doesn't make much sense
>> (unless you mean that when something happens, it's first recorded as a
>> record, and then sometime later becomes something else, while more recent
>> events become records, and the older ones become "former records"; this is
>> really a stretch). But "old records" is quite logical for archives; that's
>> what they are.
>It's not a stretch at all. Archives are processed records, hence the
>verb "to archive". Archives rarely exist in their original form. Database
>archives are separated from the live data, usually processed for a
>different search engine than the live data. Paper archives take
>individual sheets of paper which have been handled as individual sheets
>and has them bound and sorted on shelves separate from the current
>records. Our own messages for this list are processed to form the archive
>used to aid in searches. The archive and the current records or messages
>are not the same thing.
>They are like the living layer of a tree and its wood. One is constantly
>transformed into the other, monodirectionally, but the archive is
>fundamentally different from the current record, much in the way that the
>current president is fundamentally different from former presidents. The
>same could be said for empirors, of course, but the fundamental
>difference among empirors has to do with pulse rates, in that the pulse
>rate of the current empiror is greater than zero...
But in that case, are archives then not records? It would only make sense
to call them "former records" if what they are now is not records. That
seems to me a rather narrow interpretation of the word "ta". They may not
be current records, but they still are records. Also, at least the way
Krankor said he saw "ngo'" (or more accurately, the way I understood what
he said), part of the emphasis of "ngo'" was that this thing has been
replaced by something else, which also doesn't seem to be really operative
here.
I wouldn't have brought up the possible explanation if it hadn't come to my
mind as a way to reconcile Krankor's view with the canon. So obviously I
can see its merit, or why else would I try to argue with it? It happens
not to be convincing to me, but your mileage may vary.
~mark
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