tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun May 18 06:19:04 1997
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Re: Verbs of speaking
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Verbs of speaking
- Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 09:19:01 -0400 (EDT)
- In-reply-to: <[email protected]> (messagefrom Terrence Donnelly on Thu, 15 May 1997 12:41:35 -0700 (PDT))
>Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 12:41:35 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Terrence Donnelly <[email protected]>
>
>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:
Yes, they can be done in English, but it seems to *me* that this is
somewhat peculiar to English. I wouldn't expect it in Klingon, and such
sentences really don't sound good to me. OK, "chel" *maybe* and possibly
"qaD" but probably not, but not "jor." After all, in English you can
really do this with ANYTHING (to the point that "say" sometimes gets
reduced to even more neutral verb "go" in colloquial speech: "so he goes,
'hey, what's wrong with you?' and I go 'nothing.'") I tend to dislike this
sort of thing in Klingon.
~mark