[Tlhingan-hol] {-vaD}

Tue Nov 24 20:17:41 PST 2015

This message was held back to be reviewed by a moderator because it was too long (because I quoted too much from earlier, lengthy messages). I’m shortening it now…

Here, most of the people who learned the language well most quickly are either computer programmers or tech support. Krankor, the first person to speak it conversationally, is a programmer. Seqram, the second person to speak it conversationally, is a programmer. I’ve never worked as a programmer, but there’s a “Wolfe Test” that is supposed to be an accurate predictor of aptitude for programming skill. I scored in the 60% percentile among employed computer programmers, in part because, though I missed some answers, I finished the test in less than half the time it’s supposed to take to do so. I found the test oddly thrilling, like part of me that normally gets no exercise was allowed a rare opportunity to run freely.

There are exceptions to the computer-Klingon connection, but few enough to make it obvious that part of the appeal to the core group of speakers is that the grammar is logical in an interesting way. There are exceptions, but Okrand has been really good at explaining them.

Up to now.

If your theory is correct, and it shows many signs of probably being correct, then I, for one, and really disappointed that Okrand has apparently either been slow and sloppy to decide that this is how it works, and he hasn’t gotten around to explaining it yet, or he’s been decisive about it, for a long time now, and hasn’t felt like it was particularly important to explain it to us.

Either way, I fell like an old friend has invented an inside joke and left me on the outside of it, and it doesn’t feel all that funny.

Your explanation of why {-vaD} is not necessary to disambiguate which kind of object a person vs. a language or topic is the object of {ghojmoH} makes a very weak case for how this could be generalized to other verbs, especially those for whom either a person or a thing could function in either role with no special relationship to the verb. We know that when a thing is taught, that means it’s the topic being learned, and when a person is taught, that means it is the person acquiring the learning, but most verbs, like “hit” or “see” or, well most verbs that can take an object can have the same noun in one sentence or another acting as either the subject or the direct object, and so if you add {-moH}, and put only one noun in the object position, you have no clue whether it was the subject or object before the {-moH} was added to the verb.

All of our examples have had obviously different sets of nouns for subject and object of the implied statement before being transmogrified by {-moH}. Does this imply that only these verbs work with {-moH}? We don’t know.

In your discussion about verbs where the original subject of the pre-{-moH} statement is the only object, so you can drop the implied {-vaD}, does that mean that explicitly stating that {-vaD} is wrong? Well, we don’t know.

There’s less that we know about a general rule of verbs with objects that then have {-moH} added than we do know about it. We can guess and have theories all we like, but basically, we’re full of bluster without substance until Okrand explains WTF he’s doing here.

He has explained {-moH} added to stative verbs. He’s given us a couple of rather special examples of verbs with direct objects scrambled a bit when {-moH} is added.

That’s it.

That’s all we have.

We’ve had this much for years, and he’s apparently happy to leave us hanging.

I like this, not.

I have had such a deep respect for this charming, witty, kind man, and I’ve really enjoyed the language he’s created. But right now…

I’m not feeling that so much, right now.

I might go away for a while and dwell on happier things, and I apologize, quite sincerely for the stubborn, frustrating, dark mood of my recent posts. The Klingon language has been a nearly perfect jewel for me. It’s like a cave to explore, and here I am at a pinch point I can’t squeeze through.

I’ve been here before, on this very grammatical point. I intentionally forgot it and ignored that it existed, because it’s really quite unnecessary to have this resolved in order to speak Klingon quite well.

But it’s like a black hole, pulling me in. Okrand sheds no light on it. For years now.

I need to leave it alone.

lojmIt tI’wI’ nuv ‘utlh
Door Repair Guy, Retired Honorably

> On Nov 23, 2015, at 8:43 PM, Brent Kesler <brent.of.all.people at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I've read your argument now, and I wish I had read it sooner. I'm glad I'm catching up.
> 
> Before I answer some of your questions, I'm going to copy and paste my examples for easy reference:
> 
> 10. puqvaD QeD vIghojmoH.
> 11. puq vIghojmoH.
> 12. QeD vIghojmoH.
> 
> You're right that I don't explain how both sentences 11 and 12 follow from 10. The reason is that my argument is just a hypothesis. It could be wrong. Both {puq vIghojmoH} and {QeD vIghojmoH} seem like acceptable sentences to me, and this is an explanation of how both sentences *could* be acceptable. But we don't have strong enough evidence to say that it's an actual rule.
> 
> However, I want to clarify a bit of my thinking. I'm don't think of sentence 11 as deleting the thing being taught (QeD) and moving the person being taught (puq) from the {-vaD} position to the direct object position. I think all three sentences--10, 11, and 12--are separate applications of {-moH} to the underlying sentence {QeD ghoj puq}.
> 
> We only need a clear rule when we have three arguments with a transitive verb + {-moH}: previous A is marked as a non-core argument with {-vaD}, and previous O remains the O. If we leave one of those arguments out, we can put *either* the previous O or the previous A in the O slot. As long as we use only one of them, we don't need any special syntactic marking to make the meaning clear. (At least that's my hypothesis).
> 
> If that's the case, I don't need to delete {QeD} and promote {puqvaD} up to {puq}, and I don't need a rule saying I can do that. If I say {QeD vIghojmoH}, it's obvious that I'm not standing in a classroom with Science sitting at his desk while I give a lecture about poetry. If I say {puq vIghojmoH}, it's obvious that I'm not standing in a classroom giving a lecture about children--or at least, most people would assume I helping a child learn something, since that's the usual meaning of a sentence like that--and it's the usual meaning because that's what happens more often in our real world experience. If we lived in the setting of "Children of Men", maybe a lecture about children would be the "obvious" meaning of {puq vIghojmoH}.
> 
> In other words, I think Klingon offers multiple strategies when applying {-moH} to transitives, and speakers can choose the strategy that best fits what they want to say. I think that fits the spirit of many of MO's translations, but--again, and I can't stress this enough--this is just my hypothesis, and it could be wrong.
> 
> I think part of this debate stems from the two different ways we look at language and grammar (for any language). The first is that language is an exercise in symbolic logic. Words have a clear symbolic meaning, and grammars give clear rules for arranging those symbols to create new meanings. The second is that languages are used by organic beings that aren't really good at using symbolic logic, so they end up with a lot of quirks that don't follow nice logical rules. Sometimes there's a hidden logic to those quirks that even the speakers aren't aware of, but sometimes they are just exceptions to the rules that need to be memorized. In other words, language is as much an exercise in culture and history as it is in symbolic logic.
> 
> I think a lot of people here prefer the symbolic logic approach for two reasons: 1) a lot of us have an education or career that relies heavily on symbolic logic (eg, computer programmers), so that's just the way we're used to thinking; and 2) you can use symbolic logic to figure out things you didn't know before. If you have to rely on culture or history, then you can't figure it out on your own--someone has to tell you the answer. And when you're learning Klingon, waiting for an answer can be agonizing slow.
> 
> bI'reng

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