tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Nov 05 07:08:04 1998
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Re: ambiguities in the Klingon and other questions
On Thu, 5 Nov 1998 04:37:54 -0800 (PST)
[email protected] wrote:
> I am writing a linguistic paper on Klignon .
>
> Can anyone think of any ambiguities within the Klingon language,
> such as semantic or syntactic phonetic ones (or anything else)?
I suggest you learn the language so that you can gain the
authority necessary to legitimately write such a paper. I
understand the appeal of going where other no other authors have
gone before, but it sounds like you are asking us to do your
research for you. If you intend to gain linguistic
credentials, that's not how it is done.
> Another question which I asked myself is:
> What are the languages Mark Okrand was influenced by when creating
> the Klingon language and in what way can I see that.
The interesting thing about Klingon is that there are at least
as many negative influences as there are positive ones. It is
apparently less that he collected pieces of other languages to
build something than it is that he examined patterns in
languages he knew and sought to either combine them in new ways
or invent new patterns. He was always working a balance between
making it sound alien, yet making it pronounceable by human
actors with no linguistic background (hence, he uses existing
sounds like the dental "t" and the retroflex "D", though no
known human language has this combination without also having
the retroflex "T" and dental "d", which Klingon lacks); between
breaking all existing linguistic patterns and yet expressing a
relatively full range of ideas and feelings which existing
languages likely do better than anything wholly original by a
single author.
As an example, he conceded to the need to have a subject, and
object and a verb, like existing languages, but he chose the
least common word order he could find in order to express them.
He took adverbial concepts and split them between two unrelated
grammatical constructions: chuvmey and suffixes.
His grammatical representation of prepositional concepts is
rather unusual. His grammatical representation of comparatives
is unrelated to anything else in the language, so while it
likely has a source in an existing language, that doesn't imply
any further influence on the language from that source.
It is unusual to have a language with grammatical indicators of
person and number, but no other gender indicators, though I
guess you could consider his categorizing nouns as a) general,
b) beings capable of language, or c) body parts through noun
Types 2 (a, b, or c) and 4 (a or b) suffixes , to be a kind of
gender difference, though not split along lines common to most
languages. That latter split was actually because of a backfit
to a changed subtitle in a movie, so it is unlikely it is in
immitation of any existing language.
Meanwhile, because of its unusual origin, there is a kind of
secret influence in the vocabulary. I personally count 146 puns
among the words we have, though I know that I've missed quite a
few, and likely I've misidentified some that may not have been
intentional puns. But the point is, if you are looking for
things drawn from other languages, you have to look at things
like, "He is thirsty." That would not have happened without
American English. Many of the puns are cultural references.
One thing this language is not is "dry". It is not mechanical.
It is a big playroom for those with sufficient wit (in both
senses of the word) to appreciate it. It is interesting on so
many different planes: history of actual development, history of
fictional development, linguistic mechanics,
secret-pun-culture references, fiction-culture references,
expressive potential, plus it just plain FEELS good to bellow
out these sounds. It allows very gentle people to explore an
alter ego. Waaay alter.
> I know he has a PH.D. in the languages of the West Coast Indians but
> I would like to have some more concrete material....
I'm relatively certain that he would prefer that you pay more
attention to the language and less to him and his background. He
is a rather private person; equal parts personable and
inaccessible. He seems to enjoy mystique.
> Why could we say that Klingon is the language of an alien race? Which
> language universals does it not meet (except syntax)?
See the note about unusual phoneme combinations above. Still,
wouldn't you have more pride in your work if you DISCOVERED
these things instead of having someone else hand them to you on
a platter so that you can then take credit for the observation?
I'm including THESE tidbits less to satisfy your needs for a
paper than to tempt you to take your own closer look at the
language.
> I hope anyone can help me.....
> I would appreciate every kind of answer to these topics.
My, what an invitation... DaHjaj jIqej vIneH'a'? HujwI'vam
vIQorghHa' vIneH'a'?
> PS:
> -Please write to [email protected]
> and not to the mailing list since I am not a recipient.
Oh, but it would deprive my associates to not include them...
charghwI' 'utlh