tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 26 10:41:20 2001

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RE: "arbitrary" grammatical rules



SarrIS:
>This is a fine example of Okrand violating his most frustrating rule as he
>puts {-ta'} on {wuq}, the second verb of a Sentence As Object. We are told
>in TKD that we are not supposed to do this. I hope we can consider this to
>be an outdated rule, since Okrand has broken it a number of times, and he
>has told us that usage is the key to understanding the language.

De'vID:
>chutvam meq yIDel.
>What was the reason for the rule?

ghunchu'wI':
>There are a number of grammatical rules that seem to be there for no good
>reason.  A surprisingly large fraction of them are related to the single
>phrase uttered by Kruge in Star Trek III after his gunner destroys the USS
>Grissom:

>  qama'pu' jonta' neH!

>The original script calls for the meaning "I told you, engine only!"  By
>the time it received a subtitle, it had been changed to "I wanted
>prisoners!"

>The re-purposing of this phrase is the genesis of several Klingon
>grammatical concepts:

>* separate plurals for people and things
>* presentation of aspect instead of tense
>* clipped Klingon (explaining the usage in ST:TMP)
>* dropping {'e'} in SAO when {neH} is the second verb
>* forbidding aspect suffixes on the second verb of SAO

>It also led indirectly to the existence of two words for "officer" and the
>odd homophony between "engine" and "capture" words.

Don't forget the verb <ma'> - "accommodate".

pagh


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