[tlhIngan Hol] Relevance of language ability to third person singular pronouns

Lawrence M. Schoen klingonguy at gmail.com
Mon Sep 10 09:09:44 PDT 2018


On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 11:50 AM David Holt <kenjutsuka at live.com> wrote:

>
> Right you are!  I had this filed in my brain as a discussion of how to
> determine what is "language using" and what is "not language using", but
> Okrand is also clearly indicating that the difference between {'oH} and
> {ghaH} is the abillity to communicate and not whether or not it is animate.
>

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Okrand is actually indicating that
the difference is a function of whether the speaker BELIEVES the other
party can communicate.

Now, with that in mind, we can move the argument to whether "communicate"
is the same as "uses language." Because based on the qurgh's statement,
when I talk to my targ, we're communicating, and thus he merits {ghaH} and
not {'oH}. No disrespect to my targ, but I'm not changing his pronoun based
on this.
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