tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 07 07:25:31 1997
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Re: KLBC: qIm/qImHa'
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>Date: Thu, 3 Jul 1997 15:47:00 -0700 (PDT)
>From: "Neal Schermerhorn" <[email protected]>
>
>ghItlh charghwI':
>
>>taj lo'laH vIlo'laH. "I can use the valuable knife."
>
>nuQaH vuDlIj 'ej qatlho'. DaH rut vuDlIj vIHon 'e' vIQIjneS.
>
>I fully agree that lo'laH = be valuable (v) is an unusual construction. It can
>mean "it can use it" or "it is valuable" - but context will usually help us.
>But -- vIlo'moHlaH = "I cause it to be useable." And, according to
No, more like "I cause him/her/it to be able to use [something]." AND ALSO
"I can make him/her/it use [something, or things in general]."
>suffix-order advice I recieved here not long ago, it also is "I cause it to be
>valuable." Not quite the same. I await MO's opinion on suffix order on complex
>verbs such as this, so perhaps the ambiguity will not last much longer. And,
>as we all know, ambiguity is inherent in all languages -- but Klingon ought to
>avoid it as much as possible, in the interest of accuracy (PK).
I don't buy this. Idiom and culture do affect language, and vice-versa,
but often such transparent things simply are as they are in a language,
because that's how the language works. Chinese culture through its history
has never been known for equal treatment of men and women, and yet the
language does not have gender or even gendered pronouns (at least not
distinct on the basis of biological sex). Other cultures which were more
egalitarian have had strictly gendered languages.
>lo'laH appears, without its confusing gloss, to mean "be useful" -- and we
>also have the suspiciously similar lI' for that.
No. Without its gloss, "lo'laH" means "he/she/it can use." "lo'" means
"to use", and "-laH" means "be able to," giving us "be able to use" NOT "be
able to be used." Don't get confused. {lo'laH} as "valuable" is, to me, a
special case, probably evolving from thinking like what you're saying (if
someone can use it, it must be useful, hence valuable, etc... I'm NOT
saying this necessarily IS what happened, and certainly am not saying that
this sort of logic is productive in general. I'm just musing on a possible
origin for this word, as an idiom.)
>>nab pegh vISov. "I know a secret plan."
>
>TKD shows pegh = keep something secret (v). To write the above sentence, I
>would choose nab peghlu'bogh vISov = I know a plan which is kept secret. Where
>is there a canonical use of pegh = be secret (v)?
{De' pegh Sovlu'DI' chaq Do'Ha'}, secrecy proverb.
Hmm. I wonder if that's not an idiomatic N-N construction? Not "secret
information" but "the secret of some information", used idiomatically.
We've long considered it a verb, though. Maybe we should re-think it.
Then again, that would require postulating N-N constructions used for this
sort of idiom, which may be a big step (It does happen in Hebrew though.
Things like "`ayin hara`" for "the evil eye." If it were an adjective it
should be "`ayin hara`ah" since "eye" is feminine. It actually is a
slightly irregular N-N construction for "eye of evil" (it *should* be "`eyn
hara`"). There are quite a few other idioms like this).
~mark
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