<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">We’ll just have to disagree.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">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.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">So, here’s your new assignment:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">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.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">When you can do that, I will be eagerly reading your insightful deconstruction of Klingon Replacement Proverbs.</div><br class=""><div class="">
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;">charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan<br class=""><br class="">rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.</div>
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<div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Feb 16, 2021, at 3:38 AM, De'vID <<a href="mailto:de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com" class="">de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="auto" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><br class=""></div><br class=""><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 02:09, Will Martin <<a href="mailto:willmartin2@mac.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer" class="">willmartin2@mac.com</a>> wrote:<br class=""></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div class=""><div class="">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.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I was trying to come up with something meaningful. My bad. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I retract my earlier analysis, since I was leaning in toward something meaningful instead of leaning in toward something literal.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">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.</div></div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div class="">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. </div><div class=""></div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">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".)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div class=""><div class=""></div><div class="">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.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">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.</div></div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">As I quoted earlier (from TKD section 6.6):</div><div class="">"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". </div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">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.</div><div dir="auto" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="auto" class="">-- </div><div dir="auto" class="">De'vID</div></div></div>
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