tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jul 06 19:18:53 2000
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
RE: Deixis and direction
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Trimboli [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2000 2:02 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Deixis and direction
>
>
> jatlh Albert Arendsen:
> > I speak German, which has, in total, 16 cases, and at school I've had
> > Greek, which has 24, and Greek, which has 30.
> >
> > 1st case is Subjective, 2nd is Genitive, 3rd is Adjective, 4th is
> > Objective, 5th is Locative. All these exist in all three genders
> > (Masculin, Feminin, Neutral) and in both numbers (Single, Plural). Greek
> > doesn't have Locative, and uses Adjective for that instead.
> >
> > In Klingon Subjectives and Objectives are formed by location in the
> > sentence.
>
> Agreed.
>
> > Genitive is formed by type 4 suffixes,
>
> Genitive is also formed with the Klingon noun-noun construction
> (TKD section
> 3.4).
>
> > Adjective is formed by
> > type 5 suffixes - and here you can see that Klingon grammar is similar
> > to Greek, because -Daq, an obvious Locative, is a type 5 suffix.
>
> Perhaps "case" is the wrong concept to be discussing here. After all, I'm
> trying to show something that doesn't fit into any Terran case known.
> "Case" is "a category in the inflection of nouns, pronouns, and
> adjectives,
> denoting the syntactic relation of these words to other words in the
> sentence, indicated by the form or position of the words."
> (American College
> Dictionary, 1966) Okrand calls TKD section 3.3.5 "Syntactic
> Markers." I'm
> not utterly convinced that what section 3.3.5 demonstrates really
> DOES have
> anything to do with syntax,
"... denoting the syntactic relation of these words... by the form or
position..."
The suffixes constitute the form of the words and do indicate the syntactic
relationship between the suffixed noun and its verb. They are definitely
"syntactic markers". Syntax does not refer only to the order of the words,
but also the form of the words. You seem to think this form element doesn't
count, but that syntax only refers to word order. I've noticed this in a
couple of other posts as well. Am I misinterpreting something or
misremembering something?
> but I can certainly see the argument stating
> that nouns with /-Daq/ are inflected for a Locative case, and nouns with
> /-vaD/ are inflected for a Dative case.
>
> However, my point is that these inflections aren't relevant to the grammar
> of the non-subject, non-object nouns.
I honestly do not understand this statement. I see these inflections as
being the ONLY relevant thing connecting the nouns to the grammar of the
sentence.
> Call them "header" nouns,
> or /DIpmey
> le'/, or whatever. In reality, they all have exactly the same syntactic
> relation to the sentence. In /vaS'a'Daq puqvaD vInob/, there is no
> syntactic difference between /vaS'a'Daq/ and /puqvaD/. There is
> no special
> locative function or indirect object function in the sentence. There is
> only a "header" noun function, and the suffixes show what symantic meaning
> these nouns have.
I can see why, for a certain abstraction of the grammar, it might be useful
to group together these different grammatical functions as you have, but to
declare that differentiating among them is baseless is a bold statement that
I find useless. You seem to be describing things less than you are judging
them. Differences in grammatical function obviously exist. That's why they
require different sections to describe them in TKD. But you are singularly
judging these differences as meaningless, as if anyone disagreeing with your
uncommon judgement is invalid.
> > > /loD/ = NOMINATIVE.
> > > /betleH/ = ACCUSATIVE. Since there is no inflection, I don't know if
> these
> > > are worth two cases or not.
They are. Klingon simply uses different syntax for marking these different
cases. In this case, syntax is not indicated by form of the word, but
instead by word order. In English, "The ball hit the wall," the ball is
still nominative and the wall is still accusative. Reverse the order of the
nouns and though the form of these words has not changed, their case has
been changed.
> > I would say /loD/ is Subjective and /betleH/ is Objective - a rose by a
> > different name ...
Or Agent, or whatever
> > > /tlhIngan/ = GENITIVE
> > > /puqvaD/ = OTHER
> > > /romuluS/ = GENITIVE
> > > /vaS'a'Daq/ = OTHER
> > > /DaHjaj/ = OTHER.
> >
> > I'm inclined to disagree with the usage of Genitive here. The Genitive
> > is the second case in German, Latin, Greek - even in Suomi which is
> > totally unrelated to Germanic and Romanic languages. The Genitive is
> > used to indicate possession. /betleHwIj/ is a Genitive.
>
> The Genitive is also used in "expressions of measure, origin,
> characteristic." It is "the case of nouns generally used to modify other
> nouns." (ACD) Possession is only one aspect of the Genitive case. See
> especially "Klingon and the Construct State" by d'Armond Speers,
> HolQeD 3:3
> and 3:4.
Good citation.
> But like I said, I am discovering that Terran language cases aren't really
> terribly applicable to Klingon.
>
> Essentially, I am refuting the idea of this basic sentence syntax:
>
> [timestamp] [adverbial] <[locative] [from] [indirect object]
> [because noun]
> [topic]> [object] verb [subject]
>
> in favor of this one:
>
> <[adverbial] [non-subject non-object noun (phrase)] [NSNON(P)]
> [NSNON(P)] .
> . .> [object] verb [subject].
You've generalized your abstraction of the grammar, tossing out some detail.
That is fine to do where it serves a purpose, but I really don't think it is
cool to declare this the new valid structural analysis, so all older stuff
should be rejected. I do look forward to the positive growth of
understanding that this abstraction creates, especially when used alongside
more detailed, differentiated analysis.
> Square brackets indicate optional items; angled brackets indicate
> items that
> can be placed in any order. In the case of my own sentence
> interpretation,
> the order of the adverbial and the non-subject, non-object noun or noun
> phrases have some accepted standards, but aren't immutable. Of
> course, this
> represents only the basic sentence structure; it doesn't go into specifics
> or exceptions.
>
> This follows the rules as they are written and demonstrated, not
> as we have
> built them up to be. More importantly, it follows the rules as Klingon
> linguists make them out to be. Everything else is Terran linguist
> influenced.
Then again, we could generalize a step further:
[<Extra stuff>... <extra stuff>] Verb [<Extra stuff>... <extra stuff>]
Things in brackets are optional. Of course, this model doesn't handle
comparison constructions or exclammatory words, though it has the advantage
over your model in that it also encompasses all dependent clauses, chuvmey
and traditional toasts.
We can zoom in and we can zoom out and so long as it offers insight, all of
these levels of differentiation are valid.
> SuStel
> Stardate 508.6
charghwI'