tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Oct 27 11:13:08 2009
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Re: Ditransitive reflexives
André Müller wrote:
> 2009/10/27 Tracy Canfield <[email protected]>
>> Thanks! I appreciate the information. The lack of anaphora
>> (pronouns like "themselves" or "each other") in Klingon is
>> especially striking because the linguistic structures which control
>> where they can appear in human languages are part of universal
>> grammar, which is generally agreed to be hardwired in the brain.
>> At the very least, it raises interesting questions for further
>> research on government and binding in Klingon.
>>
> Don't forget that not every linguist believes in UG and even among
> those who do, it's a matter of debate what's included there. So,
> "generally agreed" is quite an exaggeration. And Klingon wouldn't be
> the first language to violate the proposed UG. There are even natural
> languages that do... But it's getting rather off-topic going into
> details here (and I fully agree on your last sentence about G&B).
Klingon was designed very intentionally to violate universal
grammar—since Klingons are not Terrans. Note, for example, {SuD} "be
blue, green, yellow" and {Doq} "be red, orange," which violate the
"warm/cold" dichotomy of color in natural language. And consider the
very phonology of Klingon, which exists in a way that no natural Earth
language would.
--
SuStel
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