tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 27 12:48:07 1997
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Re: defective verbs
>Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 10:19:39 -0700 (PDT)
>From: "David Trimboli" <[email protected]>
>
>[email protected] on behalf of Qov wrote:
>
>> For example, {reQong} "we sleep you all" is grammatical, but doesn't make
>sense.
>
>Well, not necessarily. It's entirely possible that some Klingon verbs simply
>cannot take objects (unless they've also got {-moH} attached to them). {Qong}
>would be one in my book. This would not be a semantic difference, I think, it
>would be incorrect grammar.
>
>Somewhere in KGT, I don't remember where, there was a verb of quality used
>with an object, and Okrand translated it with an ungrammatical English phrase,
>and then explained that the Klingon was just as ungrammatical. Anyone happen
>to remember exactly where this is?
The meaning of the term "ungrammatical" is not necessarily cut and dry.
Some linguists consider the sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep
furiously" to be ungrammatical even though it breaks no rules you learn in
grammar school, because it makes no sense: ideas can be neither green nor
colorless (and certainly not both at once), nor can they sleep, nor do so
furiously. So it's not really important whether you say "?reQong" is
ungrammatical or nonsensical: either way it's not something you'd expect to
say or read.
~mark