[Tlhingan-hol] roj

[Alan Anderson]

On Sat, Nov 7, 2015 at 6:00 PM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com> wrote:
> De'vID:
> I made a mistake in using "uncontroversial". (jIjatlhHa' 'e' vIQagh.
> :-) ) But my impression was that people would avoid producing such
> constructions, yet accept them when presented with them (i.e., follow
> what is called the robustness principle), and apparently I was wrong
> about this.

I'll "accept" them when someone *uses* such constructions, assuming
they come close to making sense when translated into English. If I'm
in a learning environment instead of just having a casual
conversation, I'll probably comment on them and suggest a more
universally understandable and definitely grammatical way to phrase
the idea. But I won't let them stand unopposed when someone proposes
them as examples of uncontroversially correct Klingon.

> It's interesting that others think those sentences sound wrong. Do
> they all sound equally wrong? And how do they compare to {rojHom
> luroj} or {Hegh quv Hegh HoD}? Do these two sentences sound equally
> wrong as the others? What about {'IqnaH chuy} or {'Iw tuS}?

{Hegh quv Hegh HoD} seems oddly worded, but I wouldn't call it wrong
outright. The precedent of {tlhIngan yIn DayIn} suggests that it's
fine. I wouldn't use that phrasing myself; it strikes me as too much
like a translation of an English phrase instead of something that took
form in Klingon first.

> Do people accept {'e'} as the object of {nep}, {'Ip}, and {lay'}?

{'Ip} and {lay'}, sure. Their glosses aren't "make a vow" and "make a
promise", which would have made me reject them. Swear, vow, and
promise are all English words that suggest an action as an object.
But {nep} is not like the other two. Its gloss is "lie, fib", which
doesn't sound to me like an object makes sense.

> As an illustrative example (my example, not his), English has verbs
> for "tell a lie", "make a vow", "make a promise", but not a verb for
> "tell the truth".

Sure it does: aver. I'm not sure whether or not that weakens your
argument, because I'm not sure what argument you're making with this
example.

> What is the difference between "make a joke" and "make a beverage"
> that makes it unlikely that the first verb takes an object while it is
> uncontroversial that the second one can? That's what I'm trying to
> determine.

If there were a verb with the simple gloss "make a beverage", I'd
treat it the same way I do "make a joke" or "make a mistake". That is,
I'd assume it was like {Qong} and doesn't have an object.

The difference is that one is "make a joke" and the other is actually
something like "make/prepare/cook (a food/beverage)". The object
"joke" in the English phrase is inherent in the Klingon verb. The
object "beverage" is given as an example of the kind of object that
{vut} can have.

> The reason I don't accept "the English definition seems to include the
> object already" as a reason for believing that the Klingon verb can't
> take an object is that Marc Okrand has said that this is an unreliable
> guide. The same argument would exclude an object for {ghob} "wage war"
> as for {roj} "make peace".

On the other hand, you seem to be proposing that "wage war" would
imply that "war" is the object of {ghob}. The word {ghobchuq} tells us
that's not the case.

> And I'm not sure what it is you think I should be accepting that I
> don't accept. I accept that there is no evidence either way until we
> receive a canon example, which we are unlikely to do.

I think what you are failing to accept is that you are suggesting that
we go ahead and use the words in ways that are neither attested in
canon nor well supported by their glosses. In transient, spoken,
casual speech, that's not much of a problem. But in print, on the
internet, in widely-distributed fora or contexts that get archived for
everyone to read, I think conservative usage is appropriate.

> Beyond that,
> people have said only that such sentences "sound" wrong or odd. I
> accept that they do. I also think some of those sentences "sound"
> wrong myself. But why does "I make-peace a truce" sound wrong while "I
> prepare-beverage a root beer" sound right? I want to understand the
> difference, and whether there is a stronger case here than intuition.

The difference is that "prepare-beverage" is not the given meaning of
{vut}. It's actually "cook" in TKD, with later clarification in KGT
that it might better be translated "prepare, make, fix, assemble" in
order not to presume that heat must be involved in the preparation of
food or drink. I'm having a hard time seeing your examples as
something more than a straw man.

Intuition might be an appropriate word for why some of us don't like
{jIjatlhHa' 'e' vIQagh}, but I would prefer to call it insight based
on long-term experience.

-- ghunchu'wI'