tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jul 08 14:19:49 2000
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RE: Deixis and direction
ja' charghwI':
>Meanwhile, we each see the other person's question as backwards because we
>are focussing on different points. You are looking at it from sentence
>construction, while I'm looking at it from the task of understanding how to
>use specific verbs well. You can follow all the rules and put words in each
>position in the sentence structure with all the right suffixes for the
>sentence structure and still speak gibberish if you have put the wrong noun
>assigned to the given grammatical functions.
No, you're completely misunderstanding where I'm coming from. I am most
definitely *not* looking at sentence construction. When I'm considering
how your task of understanding verbs' usage leads you to an impressive
array of rules and exceptions, I'm doing it from the point of view of
semantics, not syntax.
Your goal of understanding the various roles of nouns associated with
specific verbs is a good one, but I still think you're going about it from
the wrong end of the task. Instead of beginning with syntactic terms like
"direct object" and trying to deduce rules for placing nouns to fit the
slots those terms create, I'm convinced that one should instead focus on
the semantic terms of "actor" and "recipient" and the like. Finding the
appropriate role of a noun is not a grammatical task. The grammar is
simple, and it's almost trivial to turn a well-formed idea into a
well-formed sentence *after* you've determined the proper idea. But unless
you truly enjoy building complex grammatical models in order to understand
a language, deciding what noun is the recipient of the action ought to
happen without regard to the grammar of "direct objects".
>> ...{ja'}
>> certainly can handle locatives and beneficiaries and reasons and time
>> markers. The reason you won't see {Hol} as an "othernoun" is
>> semantic, not
>> grammatical.
>
>Okay. Explain to me what nouns can act as beneficiaries (particularly as
>indirect objects) for {ja'}. I know I'm rather perplexed by the idea.
I'm going to pretend you didn't use the term "indirect object" here. I
don't think {ja'} "tell, report" is the kind of verb that has an indirect
object. I suspect your fixation on equating indirect objects and
beneficiaries is at the root of your inability to find a beneficiary to use
with {ja'}.
lengvaD HoD vIja': matlheD net chaw'.
nIQvaD vutwI' ja' jabwI': nonlaw' QImmey.
to'vaD ja' bu': tay'taH Hoch jaghpu'.
>I've
>worked on it and unless I begin to refer to a person who commanded me to
>speak, or a person I'm representing, I can't think of a good example of the
>"right" noun to use with {-vaD} with {jatlh}.
You lost me. {X-vaD jatlh} is how one renders "speak to X".
>And again, looking from my
>backwards perspective, in your slotless grammar, how to you relate the noun
>{SoQ} to {ja'}? Do you just pull the wild card and throw it, suffix-free, at
>the beginning of the sentence, using the rule Okrand doesn't use to put one
>of those unexplained "other" nouns at the beginning of the sentence? Do we
>use {-mo'}? How do we use {SoQ} with {ja'}? How do we use {Hol} with {ja'}?
To answer all these questions, I would first have to ask *why* you want to
use those words. I can invent something like {SoQvaD che'wI' ja' qonwI'},
but I'd have to do a lot of handwaving (or give a detailed explanation to
provide adequate context) around it. It still seems to me that you're
treating things the wrong way around, asking how to use specific words with
specific grammar before you have an idea you want to express.
>...When I use the
>word "slot", I'm not talking about a rules-based location in the sentence,
>as you and SuStel seem to be pushing my use of the word to mean. I'm talking
>about potential grammatical relationships between specific nouns and
>specific verbs. Which function should a specific noun take with a specific
>verb? It is not always as clean-cut as you sugggest, as the contrast between
>{ja'} and {jatlh} so clearly demonstrates.
If you step back a little and stop focusing on "potential grammatical
relationships", you'll find that a lot of complexity falls away. Whether
you recognize it or not, you're imposing an extra layer of trouble by
insisting on treating the relationships as based on syntax instead of
semantics.
>If you just study grammar in the abstract without looking at the grammatical
>potentials of specific verbs and the nouns with which they combine...
Studying "abstract grammar" is about as effective as insisting that
"concrete grammar" is all that matters.
>, you can
>never understand how to use {ja'} and {jatlh} and why they are used
>differently.
Applying the "abstract grammar" to the semantic relationships among words
is probably more useful than trying to shove the grammatical rules down
into the realm of meaning the way you're doing it. Instead of the
enormously complicated model you've built for yourself based on that
approach, I have a pair of models. One is rather simple and is based almost
entirely on the first half of TKD, representing the nearly mechanical
translation of concrete ideas to and from Klingon sentences. The other is
much more fluid and is based on my understanding of the meaning of
individual words. This second model is the kind of thing you're always
talking about, except that you insist on including the grammatical rules
along with the semantic roles, which makes for an exponential explosion of
complexity as small exceptions meet other small exceptions.
> You can be easily mystified by their gloss definitions, trying
>to have those definitions alone explain how and when to use one or the
>other. Meanwhile, if you study the way that persons addressed are direct
>objects of {ja'} and indirect objects of {jatlh} and things said are direct
>objects of {jatlh} and have no relationship whatsoever to {ja'}, then you
>can begin to use {ja'} and {jatlh} well and as you expand the number of
>words you similarly understand as well, you expand your ability to speak the
>language well.
Understanding what roles words take in relation to each other is productive
even without studying the grammar. I can explain to my sister how {ja'}
and {jatlh} differ and expect her to understand, even though she probably
doesn't even know what a direct object is in English, much less Klingon.
>What I'm trying to do is focus my attention on that tiny, shining point
>where the energy of semantics flows into the structure of the syntax. It is
>like static electricity gathered from the air into a wire. Something
>powerful happens there. If you study floating static electricity alone, it
>is formless. If you study the wiring alone, you never get a spark. It is the
>union where language happens.
I keep seeing your arguments couched more in terms of manipulating the
shape of the wiring in order to match the form of the floating electricity.
It comes across as trying to model ideas in syntactical ways, which is
about as easy as trying to use a wire-frame model to explain the Ideal Gas
Law. It can be done, but it involves lots of special cases and
uncomfortable stretching to accomodate terms that don't quite apply
naturally.
-- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh