[Tlhingan-hol] Piraha

[David Holt]

You may notice that even in English such sentences can get confusing and rambling.  In both English and Klingon it is much clearer to use short direct sentences and just use many of them.  However, in English very short sentences sound abrupt and dull.  In English we often try to go for a more medium length with closely related concepts together in one sentence, but breaking things into a separate sentence as they get further from the point of that sentence.  Some people may even think less of the intelligence of a person who uses only short sentences.  However, Klingons are, by nature, more direct and they prefer short clear sentences.  Any time you find yourself unable to figure out how to include some clause in a Klingon sentence, you are probably better off breaking the idea into two sentences.


That being said, many of the same tools that exist for English run-on sentences also exist to create Klingon run-on sentences.  First and foremost being the sentence conjunctions ('ej, 'ach, pagh, qoj), but also everything in section 6.2 of TKD.  To answer your question directly, there is no actual limit to Klingon sentence length and someone could expand a sentence indefinitely if they so chose.  However, they would probably sacrifice a lot of clarity and any Klingons listening to them would probably quickly come to suspect that the person was trying to hide something from them.  There's a chance they might not get very far before the sentence would be ended for them (if you know what I mean).


janSIy


________________________________
From: qunnoQ HoD <mihkoun at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, October 31, 2015 1:40 PM
To: tlhIngan Hol mailing list
Subject: [Tlhingan-hol] Piraha

it so happened,that earlier today i saw part of a documentary concerning the evolution of terran languages. in this documentary,a universal property of EVERY earth language was described (the linguistic term currently eludes me). This attribute is the ability to expand the length of a sentence -in theory- indefinitely..

example :

''..the pink targh with red dots we used to have grew very noisy,so my mother cooked it and after eating it,I took my bird of a prey for ride,to test its recently installed warp core,which was very costly to acquire,but the interstellar patrol arrested me just as i was about to hit warp factor 9,let alone the fact that they scratched its hand-made klingon emblems etc etc.."

the only terran language (according to the documentary) which doesn't have the aforementioned attribute is the language of a secluded tribe called "the Piraha" ; the same language has also the characteristic that it doesn't have tenses. Everything is described in the present tense.

So, I would like to ask.. Does Klingon have "a maximum sentence length" ? Or theoretically someone would be able to "expand" a sentence indefinitely ? Is there a rule in canon,which prohibits a sentence to grow beyond a certain length ?

qunnoQ
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