On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 1:02 PM SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

On 4/10/2019 12:48 PM, Ed Bailey wrote:

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.

Wait, who determined that -moH is sometimes dropped from meQ, and how did they determine it? I recognize that meQ is first defined and used for us as burn and is used several times with the subject being the thing that is on fire, and that KGT used it transitively with the thing on fire as the object, but how do you go from that to saying the mechanism behind this is a dropped -moH? How do you know it isn't just that the subject and object of the verb are flexible in the same way that English burn is? (Which is probably the reason why the usage changed.) Or some other explanation I haven't thought of?

meQ used transitively is synonymous with meQmoH, right? So you can say meQmoH if you like, or you can dispense with -moH. But yes, there's no telling whether the transitive or intransitive sense came first. If meQ is just flexible like English burn, wouldn't you like to know what other Klingon verbs are flexible in this way?

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.

You can't just declare that anything that seems wrong, but that you can manage to understand anyway, is done intentionally and to be accepted. I can usually understand Bingon, but I'm not going to call it acceptable language variation. You can hypothesize something like this, but it's just speculation, especially if you simply label every Englishism you see in this way.

I don't simply label every Englishism I see in this way. I do expect acceptable language variation in Klingon to be strongly influenced by the desire for brevity, as in clipped Klingon, with idiomatic usage as an opposing force. pab'e' Sovlu'bogh, rut chIch vIpabHa'. chaq jaSHa' pabHa' tlhInganpu' 'e' vIpIHlaH 'ach vISovlaHbe'. pabHa'law'chugh latlh, SIchDaj vIyaj 'e' vInID. pabHey lo'bogh vIlajnISbe' 'ach SIbI' vIlajQo' net poQbe'.

~mIp'av