tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Apr 04 07:52:32 1997

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Re: Stative verbs



~mark explained:
> 
> See, the problem is that we don't have a clear dividing line, and for some
> reason people have decided on a particular heuristic and then have
> forgotten it's not canonical or at all cut and dried.
> 
especially I - as a non-native speaker of English - see the problem
in the heuristic being based on the _English_ translation of the
Klingon verb

> If you read that to mean that Okrand is saying that only verbs translated
> as "be ..." can be used as adjectives, that essentially is saying that the
> set of Klingon "adjectives" is precisely the same as English ones, which is
> pretty hard to believe.  Moreover, "expressed as adjectives in

especially as not even the set of German adjectives is the same as that
of English, and German and English are definitely more closely related
than English and Klingon. e.g., there is no adjective for "lucky" in
German; the adjective "gluecklich" means "happy" in most cases and a
dictionary would have to say "have luck"

also - although I don't know what {taH}1 really means, I'm pretty sure
it would have to be translated using words like "appear" rather than "be"
("unter einem negativen Winkel erscheinen" - "appear under a neg. angle")

certainly it is not possible to say that only verbs which are translated
into German using "sein" ("to be") can be used attributively in Klingon

> "idea" of ailing/being ill a "state or quality"?  Depends who you ask, and
> what language they speak.  Different languages work it differently (I don't

so I draw the conclusion that in borderline cases we should not use
them attributively until Okrand sanctions that usage

HomDoq



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