tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Mar 31 13:03:27 1997
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Re: double ways of seeing translation
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>Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 05:56:16 -0800 (PST)
>From: "Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen" <[email protected]>
>
>qoror writes:
>
>(much material deleted)
>
>> "Of course, I would have phoned them myself."
>>
>> I won't try to translate any of this stuff *except* the "Of course."
>> Say you defy a lot of grammar and have him say:
>> "-bej." ..or "definitely." But think. If this is Clipped Klingon,
>> it actually means "Watch," or maybe "Just watch."
>
>A native English speaker would not indicate that an action occurred in the
>past by simply uttering the typical suffix "-ed" (though to parallel your
>point, a listener might infer he was speaking about Edward).
An excellent point. It sounds well and good to us non-native speakers to
free bound morphemes, because we think of them iconically, separately. But
if you and someone were looking at a proposal, and you saw four separate
things wrong with it, and your friend say "Hmm.. Problem here," would it be
at all sensible for you to say "-s!" (i.e. problems plural)? No... Maybe
you could say "problemS" and emphasize the plural, but the bound morpheme
doesn't stand by itself. With the possible exception of deliberately,
self-consciously cutesy speakers, you don't here people using "-ing!" or
"-ed!" or "-s" as interjections. No more would I expect a Klingon to say
"mey!" or "bej!" as standalone suffixes. (note, though, an exception: Qo'
is both suffix and exclamation, with related meanings, and there's also taH
as verb and suffix (not counting things like moH which have different
meanings). But those exceptions do not prove anything generalizable.)
~mark
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