tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 15 12:28:31 1997

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Verbs of speaking

I've always had a broad interpretation of which verbs could be used in 
reporting discourse (verbs of speaking).  I write a lot of dialog, and I 
liked being able to use verbs besides {jatlh, ja', jang}, etc. for variety.  
But I've been re-examining my basis for this practice, and I wanted to get 
the opinion of the list on this.

We know in English that you can use lots of different verbs as verbs of 
speaking:

He said, "Show me the weapons."
He added, "Show me the weapons."
He challenged, "Show me the weapons."
He exploded, "Show me the weapons."

All these are valid English and clearly understood.  It seems to me that the 
reason we can use the last 3 verbs as verbs of speaking is because they really 
stand for a longer phrase:

He added = He added a sentence, saying...
He challenged = He challenged me by saying...
He exploded = He exploded as he said...
("exploded" itself is a metaphor for "he seemed to explode", of course)

Note that each expanded phrase contains a regular verb of speaking.

I'm realizing that I've made a similar assumption about Klingon when using
other verbs as verbs of speaking:

jatlh ghaH jIHvaD nuHmey yI'ang
chel ghaH jIHvaD nuHmey yI'ang
qaD ghaH jIHvaD nuHmey yI'ang
jor ghaH jIHvaD nuHmey yI'ang

These are valid expressions, I reasoned, because they stand for longer
phrases that contain regular verbs of speaking:

mu'tlhegh chel ghaH jatlhDI'...
muqaD ghaH jatlhDI'...
jor ghaH jatlhDI'...
({jor} a metaphor for {jorlaw'})

My questions for the list: is this an acceptable analysis?  Are similar 
paraphrases attested in canon?

If this practice is not valid, I could just switch to the longer form using
{jatlhDI'}, but I felt it was time to examine my rationale for this.

-- ter'eS

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/2711

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