[tlhIngan Hol] law' puS with the -taHvIS and type-9 clauses preceding each element

[Will Martin]

We’ll just have to disagree.

You are rejecting my point simply because you don’t like the conclusion. You are determined to press your case fixating on the MEANING of a Replacement Proverb, which we cannot understand because it’s an ancient proverb fossilized and repeated until nobody knows what it means, but they know when to say it, like responding to a surprising revelation in English with, “How about that!”, which uses a combination of words that make no sense together whatsoever, but we all know “what it means” because we’ve witnessed so many people utter it under similar circumstances.

So, here’s your new assignment:

Explain what “How about that!” means in English, breaking down the grammar and explaining the choice of each word in relation to the meaning of the sentence.

When you can do that, I will be eagerly reading your insightful deconstruction of Klingon Replacement Proverbs.

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.

> On Feb 16, 2021, at 3:38 AM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 02:09, Will Martin <willmartin2 at mac.com <mailto:willmartin2 at mac.com>> wrote:
> You’ve missed my point. Analysis of a Replacement Proverb is probably futile because it may very well be gibberish that lost its meaning thousands of years ago. We can process the words, shoving them through the algorithm of translation and not actually translate the meaning into anything… meaningful.
> 
> I was trying to come up with something meaningful. My bad. 
> 
> I retract my earlier analysis, since I was leaning in toward something meaningful instead of leaning in toward something literal.
> 
> It could very well mean, “On another person’s face [the fire is hottest.” And we might not really understand what that means, being perhaps a reference to a story long ago forgotten.
> 
> Thank you for recognising that your analysis of the proverb is inconsistent with your explanation of the grammar of the superlative. But I think you're retracting the wrong thing. 
> 
> I actually think you were right to analyse the meaning of the proverb. The problem with accepting that it means "on another person's face: the fire is hottest", is that this doesn't seem to match the translation of the proverb into English which we've been given: "The fire is always hotter on someone else's face". The English translation strongly suggests a comparison to someone else not on that face. (I'd have expected the other meaning to be translated as "The fire is always the hottest thing on someone else's face".)
> 
>  
> In English, when an atheist hears someone sneeze, they might very well say, “Bless you,” out of habit/courtesy or “Ga-Zoon-Height”, even if they don’t know German. This might be like that.
> 
> Note that we’re not really told that {X Q law’ X Hoch puS} means X is "Q-er than everything.” We’re told that it means “X is Q-est.” It may look like a comparative, but it’s actually a superlative. It’s not really “The fire is hotter than everything.” It’s “The fire is hottest.” It looks like it’s saying, “The fire is hotter than everything,” but that’s the logical/literal translation, as opposed to a more accurate translation of what we are told it means in Klingon.
> 
> As I quoted earlier (from TKD section 6.6):
> "The idea of something being more or greater than something else (comparative) is expressed by means of a construction which can be represented by the following formula: A Q {law'} B Q {puS}... To express the superlative, that something is the most or the greatest of all, the noun {Hoch} 'all' is used in the B position". 
> 
> It certainly looks to me like we *are* being told, pretty explicitly, that "A Q {law'} {Hoch} B {puS"} means exactly "A is Q-er than everything", not just "A is Q-est". The word "superlative" is even glossed as "greatest of all", not just "greatest", and its formula is stated as just the comparative with {Hoch} in the B position. I don't see how it could be read otherwise.
> 
> -- 
> De'vID
> _______________________________________________
> tlhIngan-Hol mailing list
> tlhIngan-Hol at lists.kli.org
> http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/attachments/20210216/81f07c99/attachment-0015.htm>