tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 06 08:24:52 2001
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Re: Hixkaryana and Klingon
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: Hixkaryana and Klingon
- Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 09:21:21 -0700
> >kaw-ohra naha Waraka, kaw nah Kaywere
> >tall-not he's Waraka, tall he's Kaywere
> >Kaywere is taller than Waraka
>
> That pattern's fairly widespread in the Americas though, isn't it?
> And Okrand was an Amerindianist.
It is one of a number of patterns in Amerindian languages.
Two others are:
"X is tall. Y is tall. Y wins." and
"Y is very tall against X".
Alternative forms for comparison appear to exist in Hixkaryana:
"romuru yosnaka naha, omuru." [Hixkaryana and Linguistic Typology, p.20]
[my-son smaller he-is your-son]
("Your son is smaller than my son.")
While there are some general similarities between Hixkaryana & Klingon
(e.g. OVS structure, cardinals precede nouns, ordinals follow nouns,
object-subject pronoun pairs can be indicated via prefixes [ibid, pp.
75, 111, 188]); when one examines the specifics, while focused on the
elements which are unique to Hixkaryana with regards to other known
natural languages [ibid pp. 120-144], there appear to be few if any
real similarities outside the OVS structure (e.g. based on quantity of
OS prefixes, Hixkaryana seems to focus more on 3rd & 2nd person while
Klingon seems to focus on 1st & 2nd person [ibid, p. 188]).
nejwI'
___________________________________________________
Klingon: manabtaHvIS qaS yIn.
Láadan: Bíidi shóo wí obée dodúhin nen yothenan wi.
Latin: Dum excogitamus vita contingit.
Bezdis: pos radúx zhepól'p.
English: Life happens while we are busy making plans.