tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Aug 24 04:24:10 2002
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Re: Why do type 6s come before type 7s?
>ja' tulwI':
>>you have the rules in your brain, and therefore you can feel what's
>>right and wrong.
>
>Actually, I think I'm at the point where what I have in my brain is the
>language itself. The rules are not important when using the language, only
>when analyzing and explaining it.
"the language itself". i think that is an illusion. you only have a
set of rules in order to imitate the language, and you are not
conscious of these rules. but as no one knows exactly how our brains
work, we won't have a possibility to proove neither your nor my
theory.
>By analogy, when an airplane flies, it doesn't use the equations which
>describe the Bournelli effect. It uses the underlying physics that the
>equations were derived from by observation. Similarly, when we speak our
>native languages, we're not using the rules of grammar in order to do it.
>The rules are merely a way of explaining the language; they aren't really
>involved when *speaking* it. And while the rules are peppered with
>"usually" and "unless" and "except", the language just *is*.
but an airplane didn't learn to fly. but when it was built, the
engineers had to apply the rules.
but i like the way you see it. i should see it that way more often
(i.e., it's just the way it is).
> >unless you don't give names and rules to what you
>>feel, you cannot teach the language to someone else, you can only
>>repeat it and make the other one repeat. this is the natural way of
>>teaching, and of course it is beautiful and all.
>
>You can't teach someone *about* the language unless you start labeling and
>describing its parts. But people are wired to learn language by example,
>not by description. I think that if you're explicitly considering the
>rules while you talk or write, you're not really speaking the language.
>You're just translating.
i agree.
> >the only problem
>>here is that i am interested in the rules. i want to know them by
>>name, as to speak. you don't. that's all.
>
>You do have a copy of The Klingon Dictionary, don't you? You can find the
>rules and names there.
i have it in berlin. and now i'm in italy. as i said before, when i
learnt klingon with tkd, i was very confused, and i would have liked
to have explanations that use rules that would have been easier to
understand for me.
>Oh, occasionally a term or phrase will be used in this email discussion
>group and end up sticking, such as the "ship in which I fled" problem, or
>the "cat in the hat" and "question as object" constructions. Some of these
>terms get documented in the FAQ list for the group
>(http://www.bigfoot.com/~dspeers/klingon/faq.htm).
i'm going to go there.
>But until you can use the terminology given to us by the man who brought
>this language to us, debating about other terminology is a recipe for
>misunderstanding. Going on about things like case marking in Klingon is
>doubly problematic, because 1) not everyone you're talking to knows what
>you mean by "case", and 2) you're likely to assume things about Klingon,
>based on your understanding of the term, which might not be true.
i just try to remain as quiet as i can about cases and stuff, but
it's really hard...
tulwI',
sts.