tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 07 13:31:02 1999
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Re: jubluH'a'?
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 17:44:25 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
>
>On 5 Nov 1999 03:00:46 -0000 "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
>wrote:
>
>> Actually, I thought of an interesting solution that I don't much like. But
>> it's interesting.
>>
>> We have the conjunction/adverbial "vaj", right? (think about it for a bit;
>> adverbials and sentence-conjunctions are very similar grammatically in
>> Klingon: they go after one sentence and before another). It means "in that
>> case, thus, so." It's optional after a -chugh sentence, just to stress the
>> relationship better: if this happens, then in that case that happens.
>
>~mark, there is no such thing as a {-chugh} sentence. Type 9
>suffixes create dependent clauses. {vaj} is an adverb, not a
>conjunction. It is never a conjunction. It never was. It never
>will be. Unless Okrand says so, of course. But I honestly thing
>you are mistaken if you consider a verb with {-chugh} forms a
>main clause.
Replace the word "sentence" with "clause" throughout my post if it bothers
you. We've already seen clause-level conjunctions joining non-main
clauses.
>> In that case, it still
>> indicates something of a link, but a weaker one. It's like a weaker form
>> of putting a -mo' on the first sentence. The "because" link isn't
>> *claimed*, but it's referenced. X, and thus Y; there's some weak causal
>> relationship between them.
>
>{vaj} is useful because it doesn't have to follow a specific
>sentence. It could follow an entire argument that might last
>half an hour. It is an adverbial. It presents the conclusion of
>a rational argument. That argument can be as simple as a
>dependent {-chugh} clause, or it can be as elaborate as a speech
>before the High Counsel.
I don't think we're disagreeing here.
>> We also have "'ach", which means "however, but."
>
>This is a conjunction, not an adverb. Sometimes it is used like
>{'e'} is sometimes used, referring to a sentence someone else
>said, but just as {'e'} ties together two immediately adjacent
>sentences, so does {'ach}. In this way {'e'} acts as an odd
>conjunction that does not necessarily appear between the
>sentences. There can be words belonging to the second sentence
>which preceed {'e'}. It is a special case.
As I said, if you look carefully, you'll find that clause-level
conjunctions and adverbs have very similar grammar in Klingon: both can be
seen as coming at the beginning of a clause (and I've even heard things
like "'ej" coming at the beginning of an utterance, to link to what someone
else said earlier).
>> That is, X 'ach Y means
>> that X is true, and while you might think that makes Y false, despite that,
>> Y is true as well.
>
>Logically, {'ach} and {'ej} have exactly the same meaning, but
>there is that connotation that the expectation that the second
>sentence would be false. I remember my surprise the first time I
>realized this about "and" and "but" back in symbolic logic
>classes in college. More than likely, Vulcan doesn't have a word
>for "but" and it gets along just fine without it.
I noticed the same thing... But there is another, subtler difference
between "and" and "but," at least in English. The scope's different. By
English's admittedly sloppy scoping, "not this and that" could easily mean
"not (this and that)", i.e. neither this nor that. "I'm not going to the
mall today and dealing with all that hassle!" (i.e. I'm doing neither.)
But "not this but that" definitely means "(not this) and that."
Klingon doesn't work in a parallel fashion, so this observation likely
isn't relevant in Klingon (and there might be nits to pick with it in
English too), but it's interesting.
Russian has a word for a sort of weak "but" that's used in cases where
English would have "and", I believe, as well as a more "and"y one.
>> It's sort of like the opposite of "vaj", indicating not
>> an "and" that would be expected due to an underlying semi-causal link, but
>> "and" that is unexpected due to being counter to an underlying link.
>
>This would be an interesting conclusion if indeed {-chugh}
>didn't make a clause dependent and if {vaj} really were a
>conjunction, but both of these premises are false. It's a pity.
>Your line of logic is quite interesting, even though the
>premises don't work.
But why do those premises matter? You're implying that 'ej can't join
non-main clauses, which it can. Actually the best argument was... erk, was
it HomDoq's? That we can't join nonmain clauses with main ones using a
clause-level conjunction.
~mark