tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jul 02 17:13:12 2000

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



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

RE: Deixis and direction



> >> if someone grabbed your arm, pointed and whispered excitedly
> >> {HewDaq yIlegh! vIHtaH!} what else do you think she meant but
> >> "towards the statue"?
> >
> > I'd think she was some alien doing a piss poor job of
> > speaking Klingon. That obviously should be {Hew yIlegh!
> > vIHtaH!}

jIjatlh:
> And I would think that *something on the statue* was moving. 
> I'd look for a bird or something, and when I didn't see it, 
> I'd ask <vIH nuq?>.

jatlh charghwI':
> What I said clearly means, "See the statue! It moves!" To this, 
> you would ask, "What moves?" I find that very curious. It doesn't 
> mean "Look toward the statue!" It means, "See the statue." Why 
> would I ask you to see the statue in order to watch something 
> else move?

I should have been more clear. I was responding to the original sentence:
<HewDaq yIlegh! vIHtaH!>. <Hew yIlegh!> can only mean one thing - exactly
what it's supposed to - but <HewDaq yIlegh!> is much less clear. Here are a
couple of examples:

puvtaH ghew. DaH Saqpu'. HewDaq yIlegh! 
'IHqu' veng. HewDaq yIQam 'ej veng yIlegh!

In the first, you're looking at a bug on the statue. In the second, you're
standing at the statue and looking at the city. I just can't wrap my brain
around a case where you're looking at the statue.


pagh


Back to archive top level