tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 01 14:26:17 1999

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: the scope of {-be'}

On Sun, 31 Oct 1999 10:35:32 -0500 Alan Anderson 
<[email protected]> wrote:

> ja' charghwI':
> >> Anyone who says {qarchu'be'} to mean
> >> {qarbe'chu'} is making a mistake.
> >
> >This is exactly why I always hated the argument that we can
> >globalize what {-be'} negates. Since {-be'} obviously CAN apply
> >to the single affix or root verb it immediately follows, if it
> >also can negate everything that preceeds it, how can we tell the
> >difference? And since it is truely mobile, the required ordering
> >of other affixes make it arbitrary which affixes are being
> >negated and which ones aren't.
> 
> I don't understand this complaint at all.  In the example just given,
> there's no way you can argue that {qarbe'chu'} is at all arbitrary.

We've been through this argument. Do we really expect to gain 
some sort of clarity from bringing it up again?

Meanwhile, you've made a curious statement. You sound as if 
you'd expect me to say that it is arbitrary. I don't understand 
why. Both models of how {-be'} works say the same thing. 
Negation is applied to {qar}. But what if it were 
{maqarbe'chu'}. Do you see a difference between "We are clearly 
(not accurate)" and "Clearly (not: we are accurate)". Why mark 
{-chu'} as different from the rest of the statement? Why is 
{ma-} part of the negation and not {-chu'}? When you bundle it 
together, you gain the ambiguity of suggesting that perhaps 
someone else is accurate and we are not. It's the "we" part that 
could be the focus of the negation.

If I say {rut maqarbe'chu'} is there no difference between:

Clearly, {not: Sometimes we are accurate)

and

Sometimes we are clearly (not accurate).

You speak as if it makes no difference whether we say that the 
immediate thing before the {-be'} is negated or if everything 
before the {-be'} is negated. In some cases, this happens to be 
true, but that is arbitrary. It is a happy accident for people 
who think this makes sense. Meanwhile, to say that {-be'} 
becomes some kind of divider between the parts of the verb 
and its modifiers that preceed it and the parts that follow it 
is absurd. Everything before it is negated. Everything after it 
is not.

Riiiiiight.

But there is a canon example that proves that at least once 
Okrand has made the same perverse use of negation that you do. 
So, you have already won this argument, or perhaps I should say 
the language has already lost this argument.

> Furthermore, {qarchu'be'} means essentially the same thing whether you
> see it as "(not-completely) accurate" or "not (completely accurate)".

But what if it were {reH maqarchu'be'taH}. Then you'd say these 
are equivalent:

We always continue to (not perfectly) be accurate.

Continuously: not: (we are always perfectly accurate).

Why slice away the {-taH}? Why is it the only part of the 
sentence that doesn't get negated? Why is it different from 
everything else?

If you merely say that {-be'} applies to the affix or root verb 
that immediately preceeds it, none of this is an issue. It is 
simple. {-be'} applies to what it touches. The rest of the 
sentence adds its meaning while this one thing is negated.

But you want to lump more stuff together so it all gets negated 
at once, but leave out all the stuff that happens to follow the 
{-be'}. That is different. Somehow, it is not negated while 
everything else IS negated.

wejpuH.

The twisted logic one allows when overgeneralizing the 
observation that sometimes different things look a lot alike can 
really make a mess of things. So, you want to make a rule that 
different things can never be different because sometimes they 
look alike. Sometimes XYbe'Z can be equally evaluated as 
(XY)be' Z, or as X (Y)be' Z, so let's just say these things 
always mean the same thing.

> The only type of construction where this comes into play is something
> like {jIbwIj vISay'nISmoH}.  I am convinced that any ambiguity with
> {vISay'nISmoHbe'} is due to the enforced suffix order and not to any
> global-vs.-local effect of {-be'}.  It looks exactly as ambiguous to
> me as does {vISay'nISmoH} without the {-be'}.

Actually, I'd see {-be'} as disambiguating here because it makes 
sense that you would need to not cause something to be clean, 
(because you have more important things to do or because you 
are growing dreadlocks and washing your hair would ruin them) 
though it requires more specialized context for you to not cause 
something to need to be clean. (Maybe it is somebody else's job 
because they messed it up in the first place?)

Anyway, by your interpretation, {vISay'nISmoHbe'} could mean 
that you don't need to clean something. The {-be'} applies to 
{nIS} as much as to {-moH}.

My ambiguous meanings:

I (not cause) it to need to be clean.

I need to (not cause) it to be clean.

You add:

not: (I need to cause it to be clean). [This can easily be 
interpreted to mean "I don't need to cause it to be clean." I 
don't see this as progress for the language. For this meaning, 
I'd prefer: {vISay'nISbe'moH} and I think it is a good thing for 
these two different meanings to be determined by the position of 
{-be'}.]
 
> It's likely that I'm not completely getting your point.  I'm willing
> to look at examples that show the "arbitrary negation" problem you
> seem to see.

The problem to me is that I see a world of difference between 
the beauty of specificity made possible by negating a single 
element of a verb with affixes, while I see an ugly mess by 
using {-be'} as an arbitrary divider between all the elements of 
the verb that come before {-be'} and all the elements of a verb 
that come after it. In fact, as the point was originally argued 
and proven with Okrand's own canon example, it wasn't even 
limited to the verb. Drag locatives, prefixes, adverbs and 
dependent clauses into it. Everything in the sentence in front 
of {-be'} gets grouped together and negated, and everything 
following {-be'} becomes perversely isolated from the rest of 
the sentence, and then, somehow, meaning is supposedly 
determined.

I'm sorry to go full flame again on this, but honest, guys. How 
can this wildly strange interpretation of simple negation be in 
any way interpreted as an improvement on how to use the 
language? How could I be so alone in seeing this problem? How is 
it that seemingly literate, conscientious, intelligent users of 
the language like yourself can find yourself arguing your point?

I'm no genius. I'm an average guy. Yet here I stand, seeing 
something so blatant that so many others keep telling me doesn't 
exist. "The empiror is not nude. Nope. Great looking suit, that. 
It really brings out the color of his eyes, don't you think?"

But, then again, I lost this argument. Okrand used it your way 
once. So, I'm clearly wrong. I've admitted that I'm wrong. I'll 
admit it again: I'm wrong. My method is not the way the language 
is to be used. {-be'} definitely can negate everything on the 
planet to the left of itself, and it sets all that apart from 
everything on the planet to the right of itself. It is a 
continental divide between that which is negated and that which 
is not negated.

Please forgive me if, from time to time, I scribble gibberish 
based upon my faulty belief that {-be'} works best when it is 
used to negate a single element of a verb. I also should use 
{wej} more often, paying homage to the beauty of ambiguity and 
all of its positive effects.

> >I know that I lost this argument. A couple canon examples
> >clearly show that {-be'} was negating everything that preceeded
> >it, but I still think that is a loss of clarity in the language
> >and I seem to do just fine never using {-be'} in this way.
> 
> In Klingon, as with any sufficiently powerful language, there are
> grammatical tools which introduce ambiguity.  You've decided, quite
> appropriately, that you value clarity highly.  Thus your style of
> communication reflects that, and you avoid introducing ambiguity in
> your writing.

I certainly accept, and in some cases even enjoy, a certain 
degree of ambiguity, but when you take something as basic as 
negation and squash its ability to focus on a point, it really 
wrecks the ability to say anything clearly that involves 
negation.
 
> Unless, of course, you're writing poetry or playing word games. :-)

Were that this beast called ambiguity were so easily controlled 
to serve instead of annoy.

> -- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh

charghwI' 'utlh

Back to archive top level