tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 27 07:39:48 2004

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Re: Possessive style

Teresh000 ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

In a message dated 5/26/2004 8:25:55 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:

> 
> 
> From: "Dr. Jeremy DM Cowan" <[email protected]>
> > SuStel is correct that I was not asking about whether leaving out an
> > obvious possessive would be understood, but rather, would it sound odd?
> > But it's not canon I want to examine.  It is common usage among earthly
> > Klingon speakers.  Sure it would be great to have Okrand tell us what
> > Klingons would consider good style, but there are much more important
> > questions to answer first.  No, what I'm trying to ask is for some of
> > the more fluent speakers to comment on their own personal style.  Do you
> > think it sounds incomplete to leave off the possessive if the possession
> > is obvious?  Or does it sound cumbersome or redundant to include it when
> > it is already known?
> 
> If you're going to ignore canon and the Klingon way of doing it, then each
> person will simply use his own native sense to determine what he would
> choose.  If you know a person's native language and how it operates in this
> regard, you have likely identified his answer to your 
> question.
> 

This is essentially inevitable. We simply don't have enough canon to base
every stylistic quirk on.  But, it doesn't need to be your native language
that you use to guide your style. I think my own style owes a lot to Russian,
which I once knew very well (and in which, by the way, you would _not_ repeat
the possessive).  

Basically I view this as a good thing.  Not all native speakers of a language
have the same style of using that language (compare Henry James to Hemingway,
to carry things to the extreme).  I think it makes Klingon just that much
more real, if there are various styles of writing it. So long as we remain
mutually intelligible (i.e., grammatical), I see no reason to lock everyone 
into a single style of Klingon.

-- ter'eS

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