tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 04 14:52:17 2000
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Re: -law' (was KLBC)
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: -law' (was KLBC)
- Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2000 17:52:02 -0400 (EDT)
charghwI':
> If Okrand says that Type 6 suffixes express the degree of certainty on the
> speaker's part, that is a fairly clear deictic reference. The certainty or
> lack of it relates to the speaker, unless something about the sentence
> shifts the deictic reference to some other person, place, time or
> whatever.
De'vID:
So /DaSovbej/ is "*I* am certain that you know it".
Now, what happens if I tack on a /-'a'/: /DaSovbej'a'/. I would
read this as "Are *you* certain that you know it?", i.e. "Do *you*
know this for a fact?"
I have difficulty with the idea that the certainty is on the
part of the questioner, i.e. "Do you know it (to a degree that
*I* am certain)?" would be a very strange question.
Is it the /Da-/ or the /-'a'/ that shifts the deictic reference,
or is it the combination of both?
> > pagh:
> > One canon example of <-law'> from a Skybox card is: <puvlaHbogh Duj
> > ngabmoHlaw' So'wI'>. In this case, the speaker (i.e. Klingon
> > Science Guy who writes captions for trading cards) is obviously not
> > specifically qualifying the statement from his perspective.
charghwI':
> While that is how we are tempted to interpret it, I can easily interpret it
> according to Okrand's direction and say "The cloaking device appears to me
> to cause a ship able to fly to disappear."
>
> The speaker is saying that the truth of the statement that the cloaking
> device causes the ship to disappear is, from the perspective of
> the speaker, apparently true. It's not definitely true. It is apparently
> true. There is a little uncertainty on the part of the speaker.
De'vID:
But this sense of "apparently" means "perceptually", and is not quite
the same as "with uncertainty". The speaker is saying that the statement
that the cloaking device causes the ship to disappear appears to be
true, in the sense that a person (possibly the speaker) watching the
ship would perceive it to disappear (i.e. it "apparently" disappears).
This is not quite the same thing as being uncertain that the statement
is true. It would be both an insult to Klingon technology and a
dishonour to himself for a Klingon Science Guy to be uncertain that
a cloaking device would do its job. Of course it would do its job.
I can't quite imagine a Klingon doubting that, or to express this
uncertainty to others.
charghwI':
> Meanwhile, you are ignoring the deictic
> context of the Type 6 suffix clearly described in TKD.
De'vID:
It's not so much the deitic context that is bothering me as the
fact that the word "apparently" is being interpreted as something
broader than "with uncertainty". I can agree that the /-law'/
is qualified from the Klingon Science Guy's point of view, but
I have difficulty accepting that he's expressing uncertainty
rather than perception. "The ship apparently disappears" doesn't
necessarily mean "The ship disappears but I am not certain about
that", but rather "The ship is perceived to have disappeared."
The Klingon Science Guy should know with certainty just what
the ship is actually doing.
> De'vID:
> > Let's come up with an artificially contrived example. Suppose
> > a Klingon adult is showing a child the wonders of science.
> > He shows her a /ghewHom/ through a microscope. Is it proper for
> > him to say, /tInlaw'/ "It appears to be big"? Or is it
> > wrong in this instance, since he knows for a fact that the
> > /ghewHom/ is actually very small?
charghwI':
> "It appears TO ME to be big." The deictic reference is still
> attached to the speaker.
De'vID:
Right, but the speaker is not *uncertain* that the /ghewHom/
is big.
But the definition of /-law'/ says:
"This suffix expresses any uncertainty on the speaker's part"
My problem with the deictic reference to the speaker is
that the speaker is not *uncertain* about the statement.
If the /-law'/ applies to the speaker, then it would seem
to imply that /-law'/ has a broader meaning than just
"uncertainty".
The adult in my example might say: /tInlaw', 'ach machqu'bej./
I can't quite accept that this means: "It is big (but I'm not
sure)... but it's actually very small." It makes more sense as
"It appears big (I am certain of that), but it's actually
very small." If the deictic reference holds, then /-law'/
can express both "perception" and "uncertainty", and these
are not quite the same thing.
--
De'vID
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