tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Nov 22 19:19:54 1997

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Re: Okrand's oral rulings re grammar (was: Re: maHagh tlhInganpu')

ja' "Anthony.Appleyard" <[email protected]>:
>  Many people haven't been in TH from the beginning and their jobs don't leave
>them the time to wade through TH's WWW archive of old messages, and so they
>can only go by the printed books (TKD, KGT, The Klingon Way, etc)  and have no
>access to Okrand's original words on matters such as the abovementioned that
>aren't in books but only in what he said orally to TH members.

Any "official" matters of grammar from Marc Okrand make their way to the
pages of HolQeD.  There have been precious few "orally"-presented answers
outside of the carefully-considered interviews; Okrand's usual response to
an ad hoc question is "Yes, that's an interesting question," accompanied
by an enigmatic smile.  Occasionally he'll go so far as to say "I'll have
to ask Maltz about that," implying that there *will* be an answer.

I don't know how things are going on the MSN forum; I know that I've seen
two or three of his responses reposted here, and none of them really had
much to say about general grammar.  The clarifications I recall have been
on vocabulary and usage of specific words.

I've only had the pleasure of asking him one question about grammar, and
he gave the "I think that needs more research" answer. :-/

>  Can <please> people tell me all Okrand's statements and decisions on <all>
>such unprinted matters?. I am willing to undertake the effort of assembling
>them into a file "Unprinted Klingon Grammar" and submit it to the pabpo'pu'
>for them to see if it is worth them making it public on their WWW site.

It's already a matter of public record, in the KLI's journal.  If all of
the stuff in HolQeD were made freely available, there wouldn't be any
incentive to pay for it and the KLI would quickly lose much of its source
of money.

However, I'm sure a "supplemental Klingon grammar" publication would be well
received by many.  If you'd like to produce one, I expect Lawrence would be
happy to tell you all about the process of getting it printed without making
anyone at Viacom upset.

-- ghunchu'wI'

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