tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 30 14:40:12 2009
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Re: Double negatives
On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Christopher Doty <[email protected]> wrote:
> Negative evidence isn't evidence. If a Klingon speaker did say this,
> that doesn't mean (based on what we know) that they are wrong; it only
> means they've said something that isn't shown to occur in the
> materials we have, but which isn't forbidden.
qIt Hoch wIleghbe'bogh 'e' wIwuqqangchugh, chenbej chatlh taQ. That
way lies chaos. Since one of the tenets of this group is that we don't
invent Klingon grammar, I object to proposals for which there is an
abundant lack :) of evidence.
My answer to Blake should be uncontroversial: Klingon as we see it
used does not "do" double negatives. Whether or not it might be able
to in some hypothetical dialect is unimportant to the fact that it
*doesn't* in the dialect we study.
-- ghunchu'wI'