tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Aug 20 23:35:17 2004
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Re: Direct quote of written statement
At 05:44 AM 8/19/2004, ngabwI' wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Steven Boozer" <[email protected]>
>To: <[email protected]>
>Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2004 1:29 PM
>Subject: Re: Direct quote of written statement
>
>{DopDaq qul yIchemoH QobDI' ghu'}
>I hereby stand corrected. Thank you Voragh.
>
>To get back to the original post, I no longer recommend using {jIqon <<blah,
>blah, blah>>}, which, unbeknownst to me, implies I was praising my own work.
>(I haven't a literary bone in my body).
Hmm... I liked your {qon} analysis and on first reading I took Voragh's
canon citations as supporting {qon}. But based on your comment above, I
re-read more carefully and then decided that your new recommendation was
correct. Then I thought it through more, and now I'm not sure at all. }}:-)
Even though it's a tangent to my original inquiry, I've decided to try and
understand when to use {qon} and when to use {gher}. I hadn't previously
thought of {gher} in association with "writing", so this is new info for me.
From Voragh:
The verb for "write" in the sense of "compose" is /qon/, literally
"record." This is used for songs and also for literary works (poems,
plays, romance novels, and so on). As has been pointed out, it's as if
the song or story is somehow out there and the "writer" comes into contact
with it, extracts it (to use Qov's nice phrase), and records it.
It seems that {qon} has a fundamental meaning of "record", since it's cited
as the literal meaning, and the point at the end of the paragraph isn't
very interesting if {qon} doesn't mean "record" as in writing down a record
of what you encounter.
So a question would be, does {qon} describe what (for example) an AP
newswriter does when he/she creates a report for the wire services? That
wouldn't necessarily have literary merit.
The key appears to be in:
But now it begins to get tricky. Using /gher/ here
implies that the writer of the message was passing along some information
he or she got elsewhere, such as scribbling down a telephone message.
Saying /QIn qon/ "he/she composes a message" or "he/she writes a message"
(literally "he/she records a message") suggests that the writer is
presenting some new information as opposed to merely passing something
along.
Scribbling down a telephone message is a little like writing a news wire
report, but because it is a /new/ description, I think that one would be
justified in using {qon}. Also, this paragraphs ends:
...suggests that the writer is
presenting some new information as opposed to merely passing something
along. It may *also* imply that the written message has some sort of
literary merit, and thus be a compliment.
[emphasis added]
The 'also' is the key, I think. I take it to mean that {qon} doesn't
automatically imply literary merit. I suspect that it's the use of {qon}
for plays and stories that results in the literary connotation, but I think
it is a literary connotation for a word that still has non literary
usages. Just my opinion, of course.
Based on the remainder of the newsgroup message from Okrand that Voragh
posted, it appears that the literary connotation is heightened when you use
{gher} where you would normally expect {qon}, and vice versa.
But one you consider an MO comment about {gher}:
The idea seems to be that of bringing thoughts together into some kind
of reasonably coherent form so that they can be conveyed to someone else.
It's clear that there is a big, gray, squishy boundary between the two.
>It would appear that there is no formulaic way to quote written statements
>directly. Like so much else, it depends on context. I did not {qon} this
>message. (Indeed, I am merely summarizing the canon presented by Voragh). So
>if I were to quote this message, I would say {jIgher <<blah, blah, blah>>}.
>YMMV.
>
>And so I invoke The Mantra: {maSovchu'be', maSovchu'be',...}
>
>--ngabwI'
>Beginners' Grammarian
>Klingon Language Institute
>http://kli.org
>HovpoH 701934.5
Dar'Qang
qo''a'lIj DachenmoHtaH