tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 22 08:01:46 2000
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Re: tlhIngan-Hol Digest 22 Feb 2000 09:00:00 -0000 Issue 1460
On Tue, 22 Feb 2000 02:38:16 -0800 Nick Nicholas
<[email protected]> wrote:
> >tlhIngan-Hol Digest 22 Feb 2000 09:00:00 -0000 Issue 1460
>
> >Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 18:20:24 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
> >To: [email protected]
> >From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
> >Subject: Re: (KLBC) introducing relatives
> >Message-ID: <[email protected]>
>
> As SuStel reported, part of the grammar update for _Much Ado_ was
> eliminating Question As Object constructions. The revised text (1998-3-8)
> has not been published, pending publication by the KLI, and also needs to
> be revised to incoporate subsequent developments; but the current versions
> of the texts Nicolau cites are as follows:
Thanks for offering us this.
> >> I've picked two exemples from Nick Nicholas'=20
> >> translation of "Much Ado About Nothing" (5th revision)=20
> >> {paghmo' tIn mIS}:
> >=20
> >> 2.1, {joH pe'tlho} says:
> >> {HItlhej 'ej nuq vIHech Saja'.}
> >> "Accompany me and I'll told you what I will try"
>
> >This means:
>
> >"I tell you, 'Follow me, and what do I intend?'"
>
> >Better would have been:
>
> >HItlhej. nabwIj SaQIj.
>
> Now:
>
> jI'elDI' HItlhej, 'ej tlhIHvaD qechwIj vIja'.
majQa'.
> >I respect Nick a lot, but in this case I do not believe=20
> >that he has accomplished expressing the idea that he=20
> >intended to express. You cannot use a question word as if=20
> >it were a relative pronoun in Klingon. The grammar has no=20
> >place for it.
>
> This was still debatable in '96; now it is an accepted fact about Klingon
> grammar. Btw, I don't know if it was Bob LeChevalier, John Cowan, or Mark
> Shoulson, but someone associated with Lojban told me last year how
> entertaining it was in the early '90s to watch me produce torrents of
> texts, find out I was getting some grammar wrong, flip a few switches in my
> text generator, and keep on generating torrents of texts. :-) This applies
> to my Klingon as well, I guess...
You've always impressed ME with this. I remember when you
were impressed with an argument against the overuse of
{-ghach} and you went back and rewrote all of your
translations of the Shakespearean sonnets. I'm still amazed
at that.
> >> 2.2, {joH jon} says:
> >> {chay' Dabot nom 'e' HIQIj.}
> >> "Explain me quickly how will you prevent it"
>
> >This is explicitly contrary to Okrand's prescription on how=20
> >to use Sentence As Object.
>
> >Better would have been:
>
> >wanI'vam DabotmeH mIw'e' nom HIQIj.
>
> In the text, it is now:
>
> chay' Dabot? nom HIja'.
Perfect.
> >> And I take from the same source a use of {'e'} I didn't expect:
> >> 3.1, {Hero} says:
> >> {maja'chuq 'e' 'IjmeH qettaHvIS.}
> >> "While she's running to listen what are we talking about"
>
> >Again, that's not very pretty.
>
> >mu'meymaj QoymeH qettaHvIS...
>
> That's actually still the same: maja'chuqtaH 'e' QoymeH qettaHvIS. It's not
> intended to mean "to listen to what we are talking about", but "to hear our
> talking" (by analogy to maja'chuq 'e' Dabej "you see us talking"). It is
> admittedly somewhat awkward, but I don't *think* it's grammatically wrong.
> (I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, of course; and it may fall by the
> wayside in the next revision.)
So long as that's the meaning, it sounds fine to me. It
just doesn't match the English translation as given. I
suspect that this would make more sense in context.
> >> I know N. Nicholas' version is not the final one of the=20
> >> text, but, as long as it is available to everyone under=20
> >> KLI's permission and due to it comes from a reputed=20
> >> connoisseur of Klingon, I believe in this=20
> >> translation.
>
> >We always fall back to saying that it is no' Hol, in order=20
> >to give the translators the benefit of the doubt, even when=20
> >they have to use a certain percentage of bad grammar to fit=20
> >rhyme and meter.
>
> Er, you may do that; to the extent I can at all, I don't allow myself that
> priviledge. The proper statement to make is that this represents one
> Klingonist's understanding of Klingon grammar as of 1996 (or 1994; I forget
> which version's online).
Fine.
> --------------------=================================---------------------
> Nick Nicholas; Thesaurus Linguae Graecae http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis
> [email protected] University of California at Irvine, USA
> "The Orthodox Church lead the Greek nationalist movement in the island
> until 1977. Since then it has been in decline, confining itself mainly
> to the real estate market and homophobia." (Andrew Apostolou, MGSA-L)
charghwI'