tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 03 06:13:59 1999
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Re: the scope of {-be'}
On Tue, 2 Nov 1999 22:03:12 -0500 Alan Anderson
<[email protected]> wrote:
> ja'pu' 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.
>
> jIja':
> >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.
>
> ja' charghwI':
> >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.
>
> Then I have misunderstood you completely. I thought you just *did*
> complain that it was arbitrary. I have requoted the part of your
> post that appears to be doing that. If I'm reading it incorrectly,
> I apologize for bringing up the argument, but it looks to me like
> *you* are the one who brought it up.
Well, given the particular statements you just pulled out of
context, it does indeed sound like I did complain that "it" was
arbitrary and that I'm being unreasonable. I think something of
meaning was sliced out of the original post. In particular, I
believe that I was saying that {qarbe'chu'} would have the same
meaning, no matter which model of operation you took for {-be'}
and you seemed to be suggesting that the meaning would be
different in that case.
> I merely wanted to find out why you think the difference between the
> words {qarchu'be'} and {qarbe'chu'} has anything to do with the scope
> of action of {-be'}.
I wanted to generally explain why I think scope is important
when considering the {-be'} suffix. You seemed to be gruffly
assuring the populace that scope never matters.
> >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)"
>
> Truly, I do not see a difference in meaning here. They both seem
> to say "We are not at all accurate" with complete confidence. In
> parenthesized notation, "clearly (not (we are accurate))" and
> "clearly (we are (not accurate))" look very much the same. I can
> see a slight structural distinction between negating "we do it" and
> asserting "we do not do it", but I think the meaning is the same.
The difference that I see is that if you expand the scope to
include the subject, then as much as this is a statement
answering "Are we perfectly accurate or not?" this also
functions as if it were directly and specifically answering the
question, "Who is perfectly accurate? Are we accurate, or are
they?" Saying "clearly (not (we are accurate))" then becomes the
same thing as saying "they are clearly accurate", since
{latlhpu'} then becomes the replacement for the negated {ma-}.
But if the model is "Clearly we are {not (accurate))", then we
are saying that the negated idea is that of the accuracy, not of
the individuals having or lacking that trait. There is no way of
misunderstanding that to imply that anybody else might be
accurate because the subject is not at all related to any
concept of negation here. Only the action of the verb is the
focal point of the negation.
> >. 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.
>
> That pseudo-ambiguity is just as present in a simple sentence like
> {maqar}. Maybe it's the "we" part that's the focus of the assertion.
> But it's more likely not to be, since we have explicit pronouns that
> are generally used to provide that focus.
But there is no way to apply negation to a pronoun unless it is
being treated as a verb. To use that in this kind of
construction, we have to go to the perversity of:
qarwI'pu' maHbe'.
Yuck.
> >If I say {rut maqarbe'chu'} is there no difference between:
> >
> >Clearly, {not: Sometimes we are accurate)
> >and
> >Sometimes we are clearly (not accurate).
>
> Here I agree that there is a difference. Including the adverbial in
> the negation yields quite a different meaning from excluding it. It
> is same sort of difference seen between {qarbe'chu'} and {qarchu'be'},
> with the problem being that there's no explicit grammar that indicates
> which one is intended.
>
> So what? The most likely intent is that the rover is modifying only
> the suffix it immediately follows, and the adverbial is not being
> negated. I'd go so far as to say that the presence of another suffix
> after the rover is a very powerful indication that the {-be'} isn't
> intended to negate the entire statement; if it were, it would come at
> the end of the verb.
That is a very interesting and convoluted argument without any
justification. Inventive, yes. It reminds me of the episode in
the soap-opera farce called Soap when a man and his wife were
sitting in a bathtub together. He was convinced that he was
invisible and kept waving things in front of her eyes, delighted
with the idea that she was seeing these things floating
mysteriously in space. She kept assuring him that she could see
him quite clearly. He paused, looked down and said, "But of
COURSE you can see me. I'm sitting in WATER!"
So, since it does seem absurd that suffixes following {-be'}
should be somehow excluded from a globalized {-be'}, you respond
by saying that it must be the case that if {-be'} is followed by
any other suffixes, it must have the local interpretation, but
if it is the last suffix on a verb, it probably uses the
globalized interpretation. By implication, this means that all
verbs with {-be'} and a Type 9 suffix must use only the
localized interpretation of {-be'} because {-be'} can't follow
Type 9 suffixes. And you've also said that in simple cases like
{maqarbe'} the globalized version doesn't work so well, either.
I wonder how many other exceptions that we need to make to this
rule before it starts to actually do anything useful.
If it really is the case that {batlh bIHeghbe'} is the only
cannon example of Okrand doing this, and this example was
created before Okrand introduced the option of using {batlhHa'},
then might we come to the conclusion that the idea of using
{-be'} to negate more than a single grammatical element
preceeding it is a bit outdated and move on?
The observation that in many cases the global and local
interpretations are a lot alike does not prove to be
particularly interesting to me. That's the kind of logic that
has long justified the Flat Earth model of the universe.
> But sometimes the textbook-correct interpretation
> doesn't make sense in context, and the interpretation having the larger
> scope of negation *does* make sense.
My point is that given the extremely limited utility of this
small scope of statements, we would lose less by ignoring their
existance entirely than we gain by respecting them enough to
make a lot of otherwise clear statements suddenly ambiguous
because we can't tell the scope of {-be'}. There is nothing that
can't be said quite clearly with the local-only interpretation
of {-be'} which is so much better said with the globalized
{-be'} that can justify the muddiness of a language that can
never know exactly what it is negating, especially since we can
now negate adverbs (a relatively new feature of the language).
> I too think the grammatical sogginess that this implies is...distasteful.
> However, I just don't see it as that big a deal. I'm not troubled by
> the presence of hard-to-interpret constructions in English grammar. I
> have no problem accepting that they exist in Klingon as well. The only
> time I'd be upset is if someone relied on them without giving other cues
> to his intent.
Why go to that trouble? Do you really think it is very Klingon
to have to say something and then explain what you mean by it?
This seems especially distasteful for something as elemental to
the language as negation.
> -- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh
charghwI' 'utlh