On 8/27/2021 9:29 AM, Will Martin wrote:
I think you guys have gone overboard with this thin-ice argument that Klingon adverbials CAN BE TRANSLATED to apply to things other than either the verb (most commonly), or in special cases where the context clarifies WTF you are talking about, nouns.
A simpler truth is that your precious, exceptional English translations would only make sense if the English translation had the same context that the Klingon expression did, and if it HAD that context, you would, like the Klingon expression, not need the emphasis you are putting on it.
Why are you so angry?
I maintain that adverbials apply to verbs or to whole sentences, and if you want to weight the meaning toward specific non-verb words in the sentence, you need very special context, and if you have that context, you don’t need to add weight to make the English translation mean something other than what the Klingon sentence actually means, which is either a verb or whole-sentence application of the adverbial.
Did you miss the bit where I said I was using emphasis for illustrative purposes only, and that it did NOT represent actual emphasis in the sentences? The only point to it was to show that the interpretation of /even/ and /almost/ or *vabDot* and *tlhoS* could change depending on which part of the sentence was being treated as the independent variable. Let's look at a canonical example. *Qo'noS romuluS je boSuqlaH. vabDot tera' Qejjbogh DIvI' ram boSuqlaH.*/Kronos, Romulus, and even the puny Federation's precious Earth are all up for grabs./ (Klingon Monopoly) Look at the *vabDot* here. The focus here is to say /Kronos, Romulus, and even Earth!/ If the *vabDot* merely modified the verb, the focus would be /VerbX and even acquire!/ That's clearly not what's going on here. The *vabDot* acts on the entire sentence to make the noun *tera'* stand out. *vabDot* is just like *je,* except for its placement and the extra connotation of unexpectedness. We are told this explicitly. Let's take the TKD sentence *qaleghpu' je*/I also saw you, I saw you too./ "As in English, the meaning of such sentences is ambiguous: /I and others saw you/ or /I saw you and others./ The exact meaning is determined by context. Let's replace *je* with *vabDot:* *vabDot qaleghpu'*/Even I saw you; I saw even you./ Since we know that *vabDot* is just *je* with the extra connotation of unexpectedness, we should be able to see the same ambiguity, and we do. Are we focused on the surprise of me /(Even I saw you)/ or you /(I saw even you)/? There's an additional possibility which TKD doesn't address: *qaleghpu' je*/I also saw you (in addition to doing other things to or with you);/ *vabDot qaleghpu'*/I even saw you (in addition to doing other things to or with you)./ -- SuStel http://trimboli.name