[tlhIngan Hol] Klingon Word of the Day: romuluSngan

[luis.chaparro at web.de]

charghwI':

> I think the more global issue here is that we can’t rely too much on controlling the scope of meaning of specific words and phrases. Sometimes, we want a phrase to be very specific. Sometimes we want it to mean more than it usually means.

> We accomplish that higher degree of broad scope or specificity with larger units of grammar. In school they tell us that a sentence is “a complete thought”. That’s not entirely true or clear, but leaning too hard on something less than a sentence can have disappointing results. Context is really important.

> Too often, I get frustrated with the desire to have a phrase with no context either mean a very specific thing (when it can mean multiple things in different contexts) or mean something broader than the most common meaning, again, with no context.

> I think it works better if we write a phrase in a sentence or a sentence in a paragraph in order to craft the environment within which the phrase takes on greater confidence in expressing a particular meaning because of the foundation of the context.

I totally agree. Thanks to both of you for the interesting discussion, I understand now much better how these constructions work!