tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Mar 27 15:23:02 1999
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Re: Order of ordinals
- From: "David Trimboli" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Order of ordinals
- Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 18:22:46 -0500
I once said that whole words didn't tend to be clipped. I later hanged
(hung?) my head in shame when people threw out a whole bunch of sentences
with clipped words.
The problem isn't with the clipping. The problem is that it's quite clearly
an attempt to justify making the Klingon work just like the English. The
Klingon ordinals don't work the way they were used here, and no amount of
clipping makes it right. I could probably parallel almost any English
sentence by clipping just the words I chose from some Klingon sentence.
SuStel
Stardate 99236.1
jatlh charghwI':
> why repeat [Qu'] or [wanI'] (or whatever noun the ordinals are attached
to).
> Clip them off.
Clipping happens to prefixes. It doesn't tend to happen to whole
words. The difference is that stating "For the first step..." or
"For the first task..." follows current grammar and word usage
as given. "Clipping" changes the way we use the ordinals such
that it becomes adverbial.