tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jan 29 22:02:16 2000

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Re: tlhIngan-Hol Digest 29 Jan 2000 09:00:00 -0000 Issue 1436

At 10:08 00-01-29 EST, lay'tel SIvten wrote:
}In a message dated 1/29/2000 4:01:02 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
}[email protected] writes:
}
}> The issue is whether the words
}>  can be used that way.  There's no proof they cannot be, but I think there 
}is
}>  still reasonable doubt that they can be.
}
}Why not go the other way and say that everything is allowable that is 
}grammatical and not specifically disallowed? 

1. Is it grammatical?

2. I think of the complete Klingon language, including the well defined
parts and the parts we don't know (i.e. the parts Okrand hasn't invented
yet), as an area of an irregular and unknown shape.  The area is partly
enclosed by a fence. The fence winds in and out capriciously, and there are
gaps in the fence.  Where there is a gap, we try to guess where the fence
should go.  It's difficult, because if the fence is curving in at the point
where the gap starts, and then is curving a different way when the gap ends,
there could be any number of curves in the middle.  Some people consider
that anywhere there is a gap, the fence could balloon outwards, to enclose
several acres, land that might be miles away. They use the gaps as an
opportunity to include almost anything. Some people want to connect the
loose ends with a straight line, knowing that they may be excluding some
legal things, and including some illegal things, but it's the best they can
do.  Some people are more conservative than that, and fill the gaps with
concave sections of fencing knowing they are probably excluding some legal
things, but hoping they are excluding all illegal things.  

I think the last is the best approach, even though my own usage falls
somewhere between the middle and last.  I am usually impressed by posts in
which someone successfully argues that we have assumed something works that
should not. I think most of the BGs, most of the time, aim to use Klingon
that falls inside the most conservative predictable borders of the language.
After all, it is better for a new rule to open up new avenues of expression
than to have it retroactively make much of your previous Klingon ungrammatical.

Some examples might help people who haven't had to adjust their Klingon to
new developments.

Once we did not know how to "and" three items.  Was it simply "A B C je" or
did that fence curve in an unexpected direction?  

Once we thought that any word indicating speech could be used as a verb of
saying.  Now we know that function is limited to a few verbs. 

Once we used personal possessive suffixes on nouns of relative position
(retlhwIj, for "beside me").  Now we know that this grammar is normal only
in the Sakrej region.  For proper ta' Hol the fence curves in a direction
nobody anticipated, with "jIH retlh" being the preferred form.

Draw your line whereever you like, but know that Mark Okrand WILL say
something that necessitates moving it.
Qov 'utlh

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