tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 29 12:11:39 1997
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Re: KLBC: Introduction to the Black Fleet
- From: "Robyn Stewart" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KLBC: Introduction to the Black Fleet
- Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 12:10:00 PST
- Organization: NLK Consultants, Inc.
- Priority: normal
SuStel wrote:
>[email protected] on behalf of Robyn Stewart wrote:
>> SuStel wrote:
>> > [email protected] on behalf of [email protected] wrote:
>> >> lutDaj 'oH lutvam'e'.
>> >> tam logh.
>> >> bir logh net Sov.
>> >> chuSmo' SuvwI' yIn 'e' wIlIjlaw'
>> >It took me a minute to parse this, but it's very good!
>>
>> I thought it an error. If you translate it literally you can come
>> up with: "Because a warrior's life is noisy we forget it." I think
>> it is the noiselessness of space Hat considers we forget. But this
>> is a sentence-as-object construction so the "it" cannot refer to
>> the lines above, has to refer to "because a warrior's life is
>> noisy." I don't like the idea of having a sentence fragment as the
>> object of a sentence as object. So yIn has to be interpreted as a
>> verb, here. I get something like: "We seem to forget that
>> they/she/he/it live(s) because a warrior/warriors is/are noisy."
>
> Why can't the {'e'} refer to the previous lines? Azetbur said {'e'
> neHbe' vavoy}, in reference to someone else's sentence.
Oh, it can refer to the preceding line, like Shakespearean characters
completing each other's iambic pentameter, but in this case the
sentence that it refers to is already there. I accept:
tam logh
'e' wIlIjlaw'
It's no different from tam logh 'e' wIlIjlaw'.
But when you actually have a sentence right before the 'e', that's
the sentence that is the object. Not some random sentence from
earlier in the discourse. At best this is the equivalent of English
wrong antecedent:
Yesterday I saw the ship Queen of the Sea. I was with my aunt. Her
displacement is 400 tonnes.
I think the Klingon under discussion is less intelligible than that
English parallel, and it's thinking in English that makes the
Klingon antecedent seem reasonable.
>> >> loghDaq QIch tu'lu'be'.
>> > That's an interesting way to put it.
>> "There is no speech in space?" qatlh Daj?
>
>In English, one usually hears "There is no sound in space." And
>since we don't have "sound" in our Klingon vocabulary, I thought
>this a nice way to do it.
*Contact* Dabejpu''a'? taghtaHvIS much, tera' jabbI'IDmey DItlha'.
Hopqu'DI' tera', mevchu' QoQ 'ej tam logh. tamqu'. majQa'.
- Qov.