tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jan 03 09:55:32 1999

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Re: my thesis

>my name is Judith Hermans and I am in my last year at university. I'm
>writing my thesis and the subject is Klingon and it's speakers!

Judith,

First, there are a number of KLI members throughout the Netherlands.
Several of them are on this mailing list, and I suspect would be willing
to help you more directly.

Second, the largest single resource for linguistic discussion of the
language is to be found in the archive of this very mailing list. The
KLI has existed for seven years now, and the mailing list dates back
further still. All of it is archived on the KLI's website and may be
searched by date, author, topic, even keywords. There is a lot of
extraneous material there, to be sure, but a wealth of useful
information that will put a definite end to any skepticism from your
professor.

A third resource that I would recommend is THE GRAMMARIAN'S DESK, a
compilation of the first several years of essays by Captain Krankor in
which he takes issue with various grammatical questions and notions in
ordinary language. The book is availabe in both paperback and hardback
from the KLI's merchant page (/kli/Merchant.phtml).

Some of the other suggestions you've received, citing various popular
magazine sources, are good to give you an idea of some general topics,
but they're hardly appropriate for a thesis. They're aimed at a much
more general audience and while they may intrigue or titilate, they
don't really have the kind of depth that will satisfy a professor. If
you want your professor to take your work seriously, popular magazines
are not the kind of sources you should be using. They may be fun
reading, but they're not good source material. Others on this list may
disagree, and certainly won't dispute their rights to their opinions,
but speaking as someone who spent a decade as a college professor, as
well as the last seven years defending the KLI as more than just a
"fannish" quirk, I'm going to be very difficult to convince.

Best of luck,

Lawrence M. Schoen, Ph.D.
KLI Director

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