tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Mar 29 20:00:20 1997
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Re: KLBC: lIy Hale-Bopp
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>Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 17:35:02 -0800 (PST)
>From: "David Trimboli" <[email protected]>
>
>jatlh DaQtIq:
>
>> ghItlh [email protected]:
>> >wa'Hu' ram, lIyHey vIlegh. Hov rur 'ach ngup wew tuQ 'oH. 'IHqubej.
>>
>> batlh bIjatlh. lIy DaDelchu'. majQa'!
>>
>> Dun <ngup wew>. qar 'ej 'IH.
>
>'IHbej, 'ach qarbe'.
>
>As I have pointed out, {wew} means "glow," not "be glowing," so it cannot be
>used adjectivally. You'd have to say {wewbogh ngup}.
This is not so cut and dried.
Okrand says that verbs which indicate a state can be used adjectivally.
This *implies* that some verbs can and some can't. It doesn't say so
specifically. However, I think just about everyone agrees with this, so
it's not a problem.
The problem is that it's not clearly stated which verbs are those that
indicate a state or quality and which are not. It's not as simple as one
might think; reasonable languages and reasonable people disagree on this.
Many here have adopted the expedient, or heuristic, or whatever, that if
the English definition in TKD of a word is phrased in terms of "be...",
then the verb is stative, otherwise it isn't. Which is perhaps as good a
decision procedure as any, given the information we have. But there's no
evidence it's correct. That will tend to get a lot of verbs which are
adjectives in English... but who's to say the set's the same in Klingon?
Is "wew" necessarily active, because it's translated as "glow"? Because it
"actively" emits photons? But "chuS" is "be noisy", and one has to be
actively making noise to be noisy, right? Using "be..." as your criterion
is not necessarily a bad idea, but it isn't the only one out there. I
don't think it's so obvious that Okrand had this in mind when he made the
definitions.
~mark
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