tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Mar 25 06:41:40 2004

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Re: That's not canon

David Trimboli ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

From: "De'vID jonwI'" <[email protected]>

> De'vID:
> >>You're probably right.  But since the .wav file was never
> >>actually used, it's not canon.  I was just considering other
> >>ways of interpreting the sentence than as a headless <-bogh>
> >>clause.  (To use the Klingon expression, I was "playing
> >>Fek'lhr's advocate".)
>
> SuStel:
> >Can someone explain to me why Okrand seeing rain outside at a convention
> >and
> >saying /SIS/ is canon, why Okrand writing a Klingon language e-mail
message
> >to me is canon, why words in some novel that Okrand MAY have vetted are
> >canon, and why Okrand saying /Dajatlhbogh vIyajbe'/ on the Language Lab
CD
> >is NOT canon?
> >
> >Exactly what authority do the first three contain that the last one does
> >not?
> >
> >Hmm?
>
> In the case of <SIS>, it comes from TKD I believe, so if Okrand
> sees rain and says <SIS> he's not establishing a new word.  If
> he goes outside in the rain and sneezes *<'achu>, we wouldn't
> suppose that *<'achu> was a new word for rain.

/SIS/ is in TKD, but information on how to use it is not.  Okrand's *use* of
/SIS/ was canonized by someone's report of it at a convention.

> But if he makes a
> typo, or a mistake, I don't think that establishes a canonical
> usage.  (Unless he jokingly canonizes his mistake which he
> has sometimes done.)

Who determines when what Okrand writes is a mistake?

> In the case of <Dajatlhbogh vIyajbe'>, I think an argument can
> be made either way.  On the one hand, Okrand said it.  On the
> other hand, it's not in the final version, and it's *possible*
> that the reason it isn't is because Okrand changed his mind.
> I don't have the KCD with me so I can't determine where that
> sentence was supposed to be said or whether it has been replaced
> by something else.

There is no place in the final program where the phrase is appropriate.
It's very likely the phrase was meant to accompany the speech-recognition
part of the program.

> I don't really have any objection to it, and if someone said
> <Dajatlhbogh vIyajbe'> I'd understand it.  I'm just erring on
> the side of caution in saying it's not canon (i.e. I personally
> don't consider it so) because it isn't in the final product.

Okay, so it's your *personal* opinion.  That's fine.  That's also not what
was indicated originally.

> Suppose we had access to earlier drafts of the Klingon dictionary
> or Star Trek scripts showing something Okrand wrote, but for
> which he has since changed his mind.  In fact, we have something
> like that in <ma'> (v) "accomodate", which originally meant
> "tell" (or "command"?).  If we had access to an earlier version of
> Star Trek III, and we saw Okrand write /ma' = tell/, we wouldn't
> consider that canon because we know Okrand has since changed his
> mind, and canonically <ma'> means "accommodate".  In the case
> of the KCD, some programmer kept around an unused file that
> might have been an earlier rejected draft, and I'd tend to see
> it the same way as if I saw some Klingon in an early draft of
> a Star Trek script.  Okay, it's more authoritative than something
> some writer at Paramount just made up (from an Okrandian-only
> canon point of view), but isn't it somehow less authoritative
> than if it appeared in print or in a finalized product?  Is
> it as "canonical" as <Qa'Hom> or whatever new words were
> introduced in KCD?

There is this constant impression that Okrand writes his own material.
Okrand typically TRANSLATES material written by others (e.g., Power Klingon
was written by Barry Levine).  If in the course of revision the script is
changed, Okrand may need to change his translation.  He changes his mind
about the Klingon in order to accommodate the script.  This is a change to
Klingon.

Is it possible that the /Dajatlhbogh vIyajbe'/ phrase in KCD was dropped by
Okrand?  Yes, but it is far, far, FAR more likely that it was dropped by
someone else, someone involved in the operation of the program.  Comparing
this to a changed script is not valid: there is no change, there is only a
deletion.  There is no reason for Okrand to say, "The Klingon cannot be this
now."

Do I claim that /Dajatlhbogh vIyajbe'/ is a definitely-correct Klingon
sentence?  Not at all.  I just see no reason to casually drop it from
consideration as a canonical sentence, primarily because it's got icky
grammar.  And let's face it: if it were a sentence that was obviously
grammatically correct, and it demonstrated some usage of some word, my
discovery of it years ago (yes, I'm the one who found it in the first place,
or at least I'm the first one to report it to the list) would have been
accepted by all as canon on the grounds that Okrand said it.  Its failure to
appear in the program would have been largely ignored.

> Anyways, different people have different standards about what
> constitutes "canon" usage, and this is a greyish case.

Quite.

> Why are headless <-bogh> clauses controversial?  Are there rules
> which can be interpreted as allowing/forbidding them?  In
> saying that I didn't consider <Dajatlhbogh vIyajbe'> to be
> canon, I wasn't implying by any means that I thought headless
> <-bogh> clauses were illegal.  I tried writing a few headless
> <-bogh> clauses and they do look odd to me, but that's probably
> just because they aren't used much or I haven't seen many of
> them.

They're controversial because there's no way in Klingon for a verb to be the
object of a sentence, yet that's what you've got here.  There's no other
example of eliding a key noun like this.  And finally, it seems pretty
obvious that /Dajatlhbogh/ was Okrand's translation of "what you said," and
he just stuck it together like the English sentence: "I don't understand
what you said," /Dajatlhbogh vIyajbe'/.  It's showing its English basis.

SuStel
Stardate 4231.6

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