tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jul 06 20:57:03 2000
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Re: Deixis and direction
jatlh charghwI':
> "... 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?
I am aware that form is also a part of syntax. What I am apparently failing
at is successfully expressing why I'm saying the form of the "header" nouns
is semantic, not syntactic.
> > 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.
These things have a semantic connection, not a syntactic one, when one sees
it my way.
Consider the following two sentences:
SoQ jatlh HoD.
SoQ ja' HoD.
The first one means "The captain made a speech." The second means something
like "The captain said something to a speech." The second sentence is
jibberish.
However, the second sentence is NOT jibberish because of its syntax. Its
syntax is exactly correct: object-verb-subject. The problem is semantic.
The noun /SoQ/ doesn't make any sense when used as the object of the verb
/ja'/, but that doesn't mean it's syntactically incorrect. Any simple noun
can be put into the object position, but not every simple noun will make
sense there.
The same thing can happen in English. "I pinched the nebula." This is a
perfectly valid English sentence. And it's meaningless. One does not pinch
a nebula. (And if you tried to come up with some bizarre situation in which
one could pinch a nebula, I could come up with an equally bizarre reason why
the captain might talk to his speech.)
One of the interesting aspects of this line of reasoning, by the way, is
that it follows that there's no reason why ANY noun can't be the object of
/ja'/, however meaningless that object might be. There's certainly no rule
that says that Type 5'd nouns can't be the object of any verb. However, if
I tried to say
pa'Daq jatlh HoD,
and told you that /pa'Daq/ was not a "header noun" (if it were, it'd have to
be /pa'/, anyway), one might conclude that /pa'Daq/ was the OBJECT of the
sentence. Now, you and I both agree that /pa'Daq jatlh HoD/ is a
meaningless sentence which doesn't occur in the language, but you would
probably claim that it's syntactically incorrect to put a locative noun in
the object position (because it belongs in a locative position), whereas I
claim that a noun is a noun is a noun, and it's merely that the object
/pa'Daq/ is meaningless for the verb /jatlh/. Not that it is syntactically
incorrect. After all, one cannot speak an "in-the-room."
Now, perhaps there IS a Klingon rule which states that a noun with a Type 5
suffix (aside from /-'e'/) generally cannot be the object noun. This rule
does not appear in The Klingon Dictionary to the best of my knowledge.
Heck, there's no rule which says that one of these nouns can't appear in the
subject position! Now, see below for the really cool part.
jatlh charghwI':
> 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.
There are quite a number of reasons why this interpretation is good and
helpful.
For one thing, it explains the "exceptional" verbs of motion. Maybe they're
not so exceptional after all, syntactically speaking. Maybe with the
suggestion that my theory leads to as described above, that there's no
*syntactic* reason why a Type 5'd noun can't be the object of any old verb,
we can now understand that the special thing about the verbs of motion is
that they are the only verbs for which Type 5'd nouns (specifically, those
with /-Daq/) in the object position make *semantic* sense. The syntax of
these verbs is exactly the same; they just have nouns allowed as objects
which aren't allowed as objects on other verbs. Again, this "allowed" is
semantic, or meaning, in nature, not syntactic.
Another thing this theory does is explain some controversy about /-'e'/.
I've been forced to agree that while Okrand calls /-'e'/ a topicalizer, his
examples use it as an emphasis. Notice that while he never declares /-'e'/
different than the other Type 5 nouns, we have somehow artificially decided
that it works differently? That's our judgement, not Okrand's. But
suppose, just suppose, that our friends the Type 5'd nouns all work exactly
the same way: as a noun, and a noun is a noun is a noun.
First, we see that there's no reason to call /-'e'/ different than the
others: since we're supposing that all Type 5'd nouns have the potential of
appearing as the subject or object of a verb, we no longer consider /-'e'/
to be an exception to the rules. It works exactly the same way. It's just
that its meaning, that of emphasis or topic, doesn't add a meaning which
changes its suitability to be a subject or object. /-Daq/, for instance,
add "in-ness" or "at-ness" to a noun, and doing something to a thing's
"in-ness" or "at-ness" is different than doing something to the thing
itself. However, emphasis doesn't add something to the noun which
interferes with its meaning in the sentence. Thus, /-'e'/s as subjects and
objects are common.
Next, although we haven't seen an example (and there haven't been many
sentences I can think of where Okrand would have wanted to do this), it's ve
ry, very possible that the following would make for a good Klingon sentence:
Duj'e' baHwI' vIHoH.
On the subject of the ship, I killed the gunner.
The topic is the ship, and since the ship indicates something other than the
subject or the object of the sentence (the subject is /jIH/ and the object
is /baHwI'/), that noun becomes a "header" noun. In this particular
sentence, you can't misinterpret this as "I killed the ship's gunner,"
because the noun-noun construction doesn't allow for Type 5'd nouns as the
first noun. You wouldn't say /Duj baHwI' vIHoH/, "The ship, I killed the
gunner" (although this time, "I killed the ship's gunner" means basically
the same thing, but that's not relevant here), because you have not given an
indication of what the ship has to do with the sentence.
Now, as far as topics go, I haven't given them much thought until recently,
and I'm willing to admit that my example sentence may not be the best one.
I think, however, that this is why we don't often see topics as "header
nouns": it's hard to think of a topic which isn't also a subject or object.
Thirdly, my interpretation avoids the amazing acrobatics you have to do to
understand Klingon with the differentiated syntax approach. You say it's a
puzzle you like, and I understand that, but I don't think it's the way
Klingons would like it. They've got Nouns, Verbs, and Everything Else.
They like bluntness and simplicity. You often correctly point out how
Klingon is not as sidewinding as English. Why then would they have this
dizzying array of extra stuff? See also my second-next paragraph regarding
Klingons and their linguistics.
>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.
I am doing no singular judging. I have repeated over and over that I have
theories. I am illustrating. I do believe that YOU judge a lot, because
anytime someone like me comes up with a different idea like this, you do
your best to impose your own interpretations on them. This disturbs me.
In any case, I do NOT believe that The Klingon Dictionary is a prescriptive
document. I believe it is meant to be descriptive. It provides us with the
basic rules that Klingon grammarians accept as rules, and then it describes
it as Terran linguists try to understand it. This is what I'm trying to do:
trying to work out what Klingon linguists see, and determine how it differs
from what we've BEEN doing. When TKD shows us locative nouns as "header"
nouns, it's not saying "locative nouns must be header nouns," it's saying,
"Here's what we Terran linguists have observed: locative nouns seem to
appear as header nouns." TKD admits its rules are basic. Not, I think,
just because it fails to bring up the more complex rules, although it
certainly does fail to do this occasionally, but also because Okrand wanted
us to recognize that this is the observed behavior of Klingon, not the
rules, and things may not work exactly as the observed behavior up to that
point indicated.
And this is also a good reason why Okrand always talks about what "works"
instead of what's "right" and "wrong." Sure, he doesn't want to paint
himself into a wall, but I think he's also saying that because it's not so
much whether the rules say it's right or wrong, but whether the proposed
idea "works." "I pinch the nebula" is "right," but it doesn't "work."
That's the bulk of my post, but I've got a couple of quick reponses to
things you brought up below.
> > > > /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.
As I've indicated in posts, this is one reason why I started to think the
traditional idea of case doesn't really makes much sense in Klingon at all.
If these two were considered the same case, there wouldn't be much point to
the distinction. If you talked about one, you might just as well be talking
about the other. Now, I'm not saying that there IS no distinction at all,
I'm just saying I don't know if the distinction would make a difference.
I'm not sure traditional cases have much to do with Klingon. It just works
differently.
> 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.
I chose a level of abstraction which served to illustrate my point. If I
had chosen some other level, my point would have been difficult to see
(though still there).
Why can't I declare a new valid structural analysis? Why isn't that cool?
Why must I conform to the way YOU decide things? Make no mistake: you're
the only one arguing with me about this. I'm not imposing my view on
anyone. If someone chooses to agree with me, I'll feel gratified. If
someone chooses to disagree with me, I'll be disappointed. If someone
chooses to argue with me, I'll explain or defend as I feel necessary.
> 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.
I wasn't trying to encompass all of the Klingon sentence structures. As I
stated several times in several posts, I presented a simplified structure,
leaving out some bits, in order to make my point. My model is not THE model
of Klingon, it is the model of what I'm trying to point out.
SuStel
Stardate 515.2