tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Sep 19 06:55:27 2001
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Re: philosophy (was Re: Pronouns
jatlh ghuy'Do:
> batlh ghItlhta' SuStel quv:
>
> >jIQub vaj jIH.
> >
> >If you really understand what this statement MEANS (I didn't until I was
> >discussing philosophy with a friend), you realize that the Klingon
expresses
> >the sentiment perfectly. The uncertaintly of the pronoun between noun
and
> >verb is exactly what the sentiment requires.
>
> I wish I could agree. But I don't. The default meaning of "jIH" is "I,
me".
> What this sentence sends thru my mind is something like, "I think;
therefore
> me," or "I think; I am a warrior." If I encountered it in unmarked Klingon
> text, it would confuse me, save for my familiarity with the English
translation.
Make no mistake. I'm not saying it's not marked, or that it's a
grammatically valid sentence. /jIH/ is not really a sentence. It's just a
pronoun. What I'm saying is that saying this odd utterance happens to mean
what it should mean, whether it's grammatically correct or no.
In fact, when you translate it as "I think; therefore me," this works too.
Like the Klingon, the English version here isn't a valid sentence, but it
means what it needs to mean for this concept.
The concept is distinguishing oneself from the rest of the universe.
Self-awareness sets one apart. The cockroach (by all accounts) is not
self-aware; it does not notice its own existence. It simply exists. It
simply IS. A person is very self-aware, and notes the boundaries between
himself and the universe. (Whether your particular philosophy agrees with
this or not is irrelevant; I'm merely describing the concept.)
> How do other be-less languages deal with translations of Descartes? I have
> limited knowledge of such things, but apparently the guy responsible for
> translating Descartes into Russian (which lacks present tense "be")
sparked
> a huge epistemological debate that continues to this day, even spreading
to
> countries where they have "be".
mumerbe' De'vam.
> Consider: "jIQub, vaj jItaH". That preserves the grammatical parallelism,
> anyway, tho it does very little to invoke the metaphysical intent of the
> original.
qar.
> Ah well, "I think therefore I am" came out of a very specific
> cultural context. It could only have been thot of by a Western objectivist
> thinker during the Age of Reason. It would never have occured to
Bhuddists,
> Hindus, etc., for example.
qartaH.
> One might even argue that the phrase is cryptic
> to even modern-day Western culture.
ngoDna'vammo' jIQochbe'.
> So who knows what kind of enigmatic
> philosophical artifacts we'd find among Klingons? Something that is as
> bizarre to us as "jIQub vaj jItaH" is to them. What about... hehe.... "vIt
> 'oH jIQubghach'e'."
jIQoy vaj qaHoH.
[...]
> taD, mightn't you want to take this opportunity to say something to the
> taghwI'pu' about how vaj is an adverbial and can't be used to string
> non-subordinate clauses like 'ej does? jIQub vaj jItaH... Doh.!@
We're just shoving two sentences together, just like we do all the time in
Klingon. If you have a problem with it, stick a period in there: /jIQub.
vaj jItaH./ You say the same thing. And Klingon doesn't have sentences as
much as it has verbal clauses anyway (for example, the "sentence joining"
words actually join any verbal clauses, not just sentences). Actually,
using /vaj/ like this makes more sense than the usual way we see /vaj/ used:
/bIDIlbe'chugh vaj bIHegh/. Here, the /vaj/ looks like it's conjoining the
/bIDIlbe'chugh/ with the /bIHegh/, but an equally valid sentence should be
/vaj bIHegh bIDIlbe'chugh/. I wonder if Klingons would accept it as valid,
even if it doesn't follow the standard formula.
SuStel
Stardate 1718.0