tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Sep 30 21:04:38 2000
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RE: end of Daj thread? [ Nope ]
>>... What I primarily object to is dogmatic explanations of words and
>> usages which were never well defined in the first place.
ja' DloraH:
>First place? Yes. Okrand never anticipated that the language would get
>this far. So he didn't get very indepth.
It's likely that he gave excessively superficial explanations in some
places *on purpose*. During some informal conversations with him this
summer, we learned that one of his goals with The Klingon Dictionary was to
parody similar publications about existing natural languages. So there are
a few concepts that he glossed over rather lightly without qualms (the
possible roles of the head noun in relative clauses, for example) and a
smattering of intentionally vague or useless definitions in the vocabulary
(ambiguous transitivity, {taH} "be at a negative angle", etc.).
>And since TKD, via other books and multiple interviews, he has given us much
>more information, and clarified many definitions. Many words do have the
>complex meanings you are looking for.
Right. Some of those clarifications have come in response to specific
questions on the startrek.klingon newsgroup hosted on the startrek.com
server. If there's a specific word you want more information on, you can
ask for an explanation of how to use it. If your request is reasonable,
and includes a good explanation of the concept you're trying to express,
you might well get a good answer. (If your questions are provocative
enough, they could even end up on the "wish list" that the KLI is arrogant
enough to present to Marc Okrand every year.)
>These people that have been telling you about [Daj] have all met Marc
>Okrand, and talked with him. They are familiar with his style.
There's another specific point about the verb {Daj} which makes it unlikely
that "be interesting" would ever receive a prefix indicating an object.
Since {Daj} can also mean "test inconclusively", it would likely be
interpreted as the latter if an object were present. Without an extremely
strong context to the contrary, {muDaj} is almost invariably going to be
read as something like "It fails to test me."
-- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh