tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 19 09:09:33 1997
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Re: some tidbits qororvo'
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>Date: Wed, 19 Mar 1997 05:18:28 -0800 (PST)
>From: "Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen" <[email protected]>
>
>qoror wrote:
>
>> 'a vIplaHbe'bogh tIqDu' ghaj SuvwI'pu'ma'!
>> Our boys have hearts that know no fear!
>>
>> Some of you probably noticed that there was something ungrammatical in
>> the first verse, and you're right. There's no word "vIp." I was using
>> a verb suffix as a verb, because there's no word for "to be afraid" or
>> "fear." But hey, these are soldiers! (I don't think they'd stick to
>> grammaticality.)
>
>In this particular instance there's more at work than just grammar though. We're
>told explicitly that Klingons are very touchy about the uses of the suffix
><<-vIp>>, that there are taboos associated with it. Now you might argue that
>this is actually support for a special use of it, since it is already a marked
>suffix, and you could make a legitimate case for suggesting that. But in the
>absence of any such evidence, the more conservative approach (i.e., don't commit
>yourself one way or the other) would seem the better way to go here.
I think another point to be made is this feeling that somehow there NEEDS
to be a verb for "to be afraid" (OK, Klingon does have Haj and ghIj. But
still). It is significant that -vIp is a suffix and not a verb: it shows
that in Klingon the emphasis is placed on the result of fear.
Specifically, you can't just "fear" in a vacuum: you have to be afraid to
do something in particular. It shows how "being afraid" is viewed by
Klingon-speakers, at least wrt to -vIp (it would be even more interesting,
and still quite believable in a language, for there to be no verb Haj: if
*all* fear was fear of doing something.) Just like in Klingon you can't
"need" in abstract, you have to "need to do something" with -nIS (needing
an object is noun-raising for "need to have/get/obtain the object). There
are quite a few such concepts to which English is pleased to give full
verbs, but which I could easily see being expressed as an affix in other
languages. -vIp is a particularly interesting one.
~mark
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