tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jul 25 01:48:48 2001
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RE: Research question concerning negation
- From: Andrew <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: Research question concerning negation
- Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 01:43:45 -0400 (EDT)
batlh ghItlhta' charghwI' quv:
>I started off thinking this was great use of {-'e'} and was interested in
>playing with the difference between {-'e'} as focus and {-'e'} as topic,
>since it apparently works both ways. Then the frog croaked.
The frog was doomed long before, I'm afraid. The wonderment of -'e' will
plague me as long as I care to study Klingon, I think. Is it topic? Or
focus? I really wish Okrand would say, but the fact seems to be that he is
having too much fun leaving it to our clumsy bemusement. Topic and focus are
two complementary concepts. In most sentences, there's going to be some old
information, and some new information. Roughly speaking, the topic is the
portion of old information, and focus is the new. Some languages like
Chinese and Japanese mark topic and focus in interesting ways. Sadly, I will
always throw my hands up when it comes to -'e', because I don't know what
the hell it is. It's as if you had a morpheme in some language that was
supposed to indicate both past and future tense -- it's crap. Bear in mind
that Okrand always uses -'e' as focus, even in TKD when he introduces -'e'.
The only time he uses it as topic is in X 'oH Y'e', a special usage. I just
use it as focus in all non-exempt instances and call it a day.
>It is a very interesting idea. I've had fun poking holes at it, but in
>truth, I think that, so long as we don't examine it too closely or try to
>make too many profound statements about what it definitely means, this can
>be very useful for making concise, clear Klingon statements.
Yeah, I now advocate the don't-overthink-it rule. Frogs are far more
interesting roaming free in the pond.
I used to get the funny feeling that just as we would develop a particular
usage for something, Okrand would show up right then and say that the
opposite of what we'd begun using was correct. Oh, how power corrupts. ;)
--Andrew Strader
"How are you gentlemen? All your base are belong to us."
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~strader