tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 01 06:45:58 1997
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Re: Okrand on /jatlh/
- From: Terrence Donnelly <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Okrand on /jatlh/
- Date: Tue, 01 Jul 1997 08:44:23 -0500
At 05:46 PM 6/30/97 -0700, ~mark wrote:
>
>>Date: Mon, 30 Jun 1997 13:34:47 -0700 (PDT)
>>From: Terrence Donnelly <[email protected]>
>>
>
>>Hence, my confusion. The sentences {<nuqDaq> vIjatlh} and {<SoH 'IV> vIjatlh}
>>seem correct, if the logic chain above is correct, but both contradict what
>>MO says about direct quotes later in the same post. In this case, the
sentences
>>should be {nuqDaq jIjatlh} and {SoH 'Iv jIjatlh}. There apparently is some
>>cross-over point at which one set of rules for {jatlh} ends and the other
>>begins.
>
>I think there's the problem. Languages DON'T work logically. "Logically,"
>I should be able to say "The toy the boy the man the woman loved hit liked
>broke." After all, it's just normal embedding of noun phrases. But after
>a while it just gets too heavy and the stack gets too full, and we no
>longer consider it meaningful (and hence by many definitions, no longer
>grammatical). So too, each step of your construction may make sense, but
>the end result, "<mu'tlhegh> vIjatlh" for "I say <mu'tlhegh>" is not
>correct, in no small part due to the fact that it also means "I say a
>sentence" and perhaps Klingon would like to minimize this ambiguity where
>possible. Your chain of events is very pretty, but not guaranteed to hold
>water (and indeed we're told it doesn't).
>
My initial thought was that MO has painted himself into a corner, but maybe not.
On the other hand, following his rules leads to conversations like:
wa': nuq Dajatlh What did you say?
cha': SoH 'Iv jIjatlh I said "Who are you?"
Somehow the disjunction between object-prefix and no-object-prefix in the two
sentences seems odd to me. I know, languages don't need to be logical, but
one usually finds that even apparently illogical usages have logical histories
behind them.
>~mark
>
>
-- ter'eS
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/2711