[tlhIngan Hol] Clarification on SIch

Ed Bailey bellerophon.modeler at gmail.com
Wed Apr 10 09:48:09 PDT 2019


On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 11:44 AM Felix Malmenbeck <felixm at kth.se> wrote:

We have seen some Klingon words that show a similar type of
> ambitransitive alternation (*ghom*, *choH*, *mev*), and I'm sure others
> exist, but from an in-universe perspective, there's not much reason to
> infer that a Klingon verb is an alternating ambitransitive based on whether
> or not its English gloss is.
>

It seems this behavior is seen in Klingon verbs like *meQ*, where *-moH* is
sometimes dropped. Perhaps this happens due to your out-of-universe
explanation, but an in-universe explanation would be the desire for
brevity, combined with pragmatics.

*chabHom bal qoDDaq ghopwIj vISIchmoH* *I make my hand reach into the
cookie jar*, or maybe better *ghopwIjvaD chabHom bal qoD vISIchmoH* would
be a safe construction, assuming the body part or implement can be the
subject of *SIch*,

On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 12:01 PM De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, 10 Apr 2019 at 16:37, Ed Bailey <bellerophon.modeler at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Here are two more things about SIch I'd like clarified.
>> Can it be used with the body part or implement as its object? *?chabHom
>> bal qoD[Daq] ghopwIj vISIch* *I reach my hand into the cookie jar*.
>>
>
> Did someone cut off your hand and put it into a cookie jar, and are you
> retrieving it (presumably with your other hand)? I read this as "In the
> cookie jar, I reach my hand."
>

I'd cite this as an example of the deliberate disuse of pragmatics:
resolving ambiguity by following a strict usage rule rather than choosing
the most likely possibility as the speaker's intent. Klingons do have some
strict usage rules, to be sure, and I'm not saying Klingons actually use
*SIch* this way - it was a question - but Klingons do need pragmatics in
order to communicate effectively, which in turn can inform usage. I doubt
one Klingon would deliberately misunderstand  the other simply because of
dropping the *-moH* for brevity, unless there was a reason for strictness
(like the case of the missing Oxford comma in the labor contract
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html).

~mIp'av
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