tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jul 08 13:44:57 2000
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RE: -law' (was KLBC)
ja' charghwI':
>Let's look at this from a cleaner slate, carrying fewer presuppositions with
>us. Look at the three suffixes we have in this particular Type:
>
>-law'
>-bej
>-chu'
Don't forget {-ba'}.
>You both want these to simply mean three levels of certainty about the truth
>of the statement. Meanwhile, the glosses have never really fit that neat
>construction very well. Notice that in TKD page 39, this class is not
>referred to as "Certainty". It is referred to as "Qualification".
It's *titled* that way. But see the very first sentence in section 4.2.6:
Like Type 3 noun suffixes, these suffixes show how sure the
speaker is about what is being said.
>It is true that the description of the grammar heavily suggests degree of
>certainty for {-law'} in particular, on page 40.
It *explicitly* refers to degree of certainty -- "how sure" -- on page 39.
>Meanwhile, I can definitely
>read this description as a suggestion for an expanded meaning from what the
>gloss would suggest. It can mean "seemingly, apparently" or in addition to
>that, it can be used to describe any degree of uncertainty.
I read it quite differently. Since "seemingly, apparently" *can* refer to
perception, I would expect the longer description to be intended to clarify
the meaning rather than expand on it. Remember, the whole section is said
to be talking about levels of certainty.
>Notice that
>{-chu'} and {-bej} do not get any parallel description. The gloss alone is
>supposed to be enough. Why talk about {-law'} when he hasn't talked about
>the other two?
The gloss "certainly" certainly (!) needs no further explanation. :-)
The Addendum's introduction of {-ba'} does have a longer description,
including the phrase "room for doubt" and the word "conviction". The
concept of certainty makes a strong appearance here.
>But "clearly" and "perfectly" sound more like words relating to quality of
>perception than to rational certainty of a fact. Hmmm. "Qualification".
Agreed. {-chu'} fits badly among the rest of them, with the term
"perfectly" and at least one example of its use saying something about how
well the action is performed instead of how certain the speaker is about
whether the action occurred.
>Also
>"seemingly, apparently" can definitely fit well in either model of certainty
>or quality of perception.
With the Skybox {ngablaw'} example, we see it used the second way.