[Tlhingan-hol] Question regarding purpose clauses

[Felix Malmenbeck]

> But the "to hit" in the English is *not* a purpose clause. The full 
> sentence is either "Is the target difficult to hit?" or "Is it difficult 
> to hit the target?" In neither case does the "to hit" mean "in order to 
> hit." (*"Is the target difficult in order to hit?" *"Is it difficult in 
> order to hit the target?") Interpreting it this way, you're just trying 
> to rationalize away the fact that there is no purpose expressed in this 
> sentence

There's a purpose in the Klingon sentence, though: The purpose is hitting it. The question is: How hard will that purpose be to achieve?

> If this explanation and the sheer obvious English bias of the
> translations don't convince you, what would?

To be convinced this doesn't work, I'd need either:

a) …to be convinced that it's absurd for the main clause to be a description of some quality of the means ("it's difficult"), rather than a direct statement of those means ("aiming and shooting").
or
b) ...canonical confirmation that it doesn't work. [Currently, the statement about HotmeH qIt is a good candidate for this; I'm not sure.]


> * Possibility - DuH, qIt
>  - QI'tu'Daq maHlaw'taH. maHeghpu' qIt'a'?
> * Difficulty - Qatlh, ngeD
>  - wIqIpmeH Qatlh'a'?
> * Desirability - QaQ, qaq, qab, nIv, QIv, Do', Do'Ha'...
>  - jatlhlu'meH QaQ, 'ach tamlu'meH qaq.
> * Necessity/Importance - 'ut, potlh, ram
>  - HeghmeH ghaH potlhqu'law'.

Would like to withdraw desirability: That would be a statement about the purpose, not the means.
Not so certain about necessity or importance; probably the same there, too.
Difficulty and possibility still make sense to me, though: That could be seen as a statement about the means, as I see it.

________________________________________
From: David Trimboli [david at trimboli.name]
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2012 19:25
To: tlhingan-hol at stodi.digitalkingdom.org
Subject: Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Tlhingan-hol Digest, Vol 9, Issue 2

On 5/1/2012 11:20 AM, tlhingan-hol-request at stodi.digitalkingdom.org wrote:
> ghItlhta' SuStel:
>>> They exemplify the structure of Okrand thinking in English and
>>> not considering carefully enough what the sentence actually
>>> means. Is that not obvious?
 >
> That's certainly a possibility worth considering. I really think that
> whether or not you think it's obvious is dependent on whether or not
> you think the sentences are too far off-base to be examples of proper
> Klingon, and I'm personally not convinced; they're not what I
> would've written or expected based on TKD and other canonical
> examples, but they are still very directly tied to a purpose.

Every time Okrand thinks in English when translating to Klingon (these
are translations, not compositions), the language is in danger of
becoming more and more English-like when people want to believe that
Okrand speaks only truth. "Difficult to hit?" got translated the way it
did because Okrand thought, "Klingon sentence order is English backward,
so 'to hit' must be {qIpmeH}, and "difficult" is {Qatlh}.

But the "to hit" in the English is *not* a purpose clause. The full
sentence is either "Is the target difficult to hit?" or "Is it difficult
to hit the target?" In neither case does the "to hit" mean "in order to
hit." (*"Is the target difficult in order to hit?" *"Is it difficult in
order to hit the target?") Interpreting it this way, you're just trying
to rationalize away the fact that there is no purpose expressed in this
sentence.

This is further confused by the fact that English "difficult" is an
adjective, which Klingon doesn't have. Because Klingon uses verbs where
English uses adjectives, an English adjective with an infinitive
complement ([adjective]difficult [particle]to [complement]hit) has no
direct equivalent in Klingon. But if you look at Klingon sentence order
as backward, and think of "to hit, it is difficult," you're not going to
see adjective-particle-complement, even though it's still there. Its
isolation is going to make you see a purpose clause, "to hit" {qIpmeH}.
Which it's not.

To put it another way: consider the English
adjective-particle-complement as a single unit. The meaning of the
adjective and its complement cannot be separated and still have them
mean the same thing, any more than you can separate the meanings of a
preposition and its object. The original English is "is the target
difficult-to-hit?" "Difficult-to-hit" is a single concept. The target is
not just "difficult"; that means something entirely different. And
Klingon does not have anything that means "difficult-to-hit."

If this explanation and the sheer obvious English bias of the
translations don't convince you, what would?



* Possibility - DuH, qIt
 - QI'tu'Daq maHlaw'taH. maHeghpu' qIt'a'?
* Difficulty - Qatlh, ngeD
 - wIqIpmeH Qatlh'a'?
* Desirability - QaQ, qaq, qab, nIv, QIv, Do', Do'Ha'...
 - jatlhlu'meH QaQ, 'ach tamlu'meH qaq.
* Necessity/Importance - 'ut, potlh, ram
 - HeghmeH ghaH potlhqu'law'.

Not saying it would be exactly these ones, or that these cannot be expressed in other ways, but that's how I imagine it.

1) is the one that I think is strictly advocated by TKD.
2) does not strike me as though it matches TKD's description, but I think most would be okay with it.
3), as mentioned, I know is highly controversial, but I personally think it'd be useful (especially possibility and difficulty), to the degree that it outweighs the added ambiguity.
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