tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Aug 21 12:45:24 1997

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KGT exegesis (was Re: New suffix in KGT)



At 07:10 AM 8/21/97 -0700, ghunchu'wI' wrote:

>That's not how I understood SuStel's concern.  While I too am worried
>about people trying to use "cute" grammar before learning how proper 
>speech should work, appropriate use of "rhetoric" doesn't bother me. 
>It makes me shudder to think that someone might latch onto the "suffix"
>{?-luH} and go *looking* for a reason to use it in everyday speech, 

Why?  Why is the grammar "cute" and why does it make you shudder? 
There's nothing odd or cute about the use of -la'/-luH, it's a perfectly
normal Type 5 suffix.  Only it's derivation is "unusual", but if Okrand 
had simply said "Here's a new suffix", you'd accept it without an argument.  
For all, we know, the canonical suffixes had similar origins.

Put another way, why did Okrand even include this suffix, if he didn't intend
for us to use it?  It seems pretty clearly to be a response to someone's
wishlist, but it isn't a legitimization of anyone's practice, as far as I
know.  If he didn't want us to use the suffix, why did he mention it at
all?

As I read KGT, I was constantly struck by how clearly the book seems to be 
written expressly for _us_, the Klingon language community.  So as I read
each section, I asked myself how it relates to our concerns.  The section
on dialects seems to be Okrand's answer to our doubts about Paramount Hol and
the bad accents of their actors.  The section on babytalk I see as an Okrandian
joke: the "babytalk" he describes are actually common errors that newbies
make.  In the section on slang, when he says it's not certain which slang terms
will become common and which will die out, that seems to me a pretty clear
invitation for the Klingon language community to take part in that decision.
So when he presents us with a suffix out of the blue that answers one of our
long-standing (although minor) quibbles, I conclude that it isn't just filler,
that he did it for us to use.

I know he surrounds the use of -la'/-luH with lots of qualifiers, but frankly
I think these are just more of Okrand's usual tactics to hedge his bets. 
I don't blame him; the Klingon language community is so creative, I doubt if
he can foresee the end result of most of the clarifications or innovations he
gives us.  By hedging his bets, he can always come back later and say "No,
that's
not what I meant" if he sees something going in a direction he didn't intend.

I grant you, the need for this suffix isn't a great one, and there's no reason
to use it all the time, but I consider it another valid tool.  Yes, it's
slang _now_, but Okrand elsewhere implies that today's slang could be tomorrow's
standard usage.  I tend to think that which way it goes depends on us.


>-- ghunchu'wI'
>
>
-- ter'eS

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