tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 11 06:28:46 2000
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Deixis and direction
jatlh peHruS:
> Try to remember: terming the number and/or order of cases is an arbitrary
> designation made up by linguists over the ages. Genitive did not have to
be
> considered the second one on the table when we studied Latin, etc. When I
> studied Chinese, we dismissed the idea of grammar as much as possible. We
> learned by speaking--using--until we deduced what is correct. Until the
last
> 100 years or so, Chinese did not know what grammar is. The idea and
> terminology all came from Western grammarians.
I agree with peHruS here: the traditional Western grammar (at least,
non-Eastern) just doesn't seem to apply very much to Klingon, as I've
recently deduced for myself. I also believe that Klingons have a very
simple grammatical sentence structure, and simply know what works and what
doesn't from native exposure to that language. We Terran linguists take
Klingon apart and analyze it in a Western style, and have displayed it in
THE KLINGON DICTIONARY in this manner. I suspect a Klingon grammarian would
be amused by all of this, and perhaps a little baffled.
SuStel
Stardate 527.2