relative strength of the epithets
There's the person who hits the horn of his car calling you an a-hole as soon as the traffic lights go green. There's the person who lies to your boss about you, in order to steal your promotion. There's the person who steals someone else's life savings. There's the person who lies in court sending an innocent man to jail. And there's the person who commits crimes too heinous to even describe. Who is the petaQ, who is the yIntagh, who is the toDSaH, who is the Qovpatlh, and who is the taHqeq ? On a thread which started on november 06 2015 with the title "tlhIngan cursing", charghwI' had written:
Sex has nothing to do with the phrase, “Don’t f with me,” or “Don’t f with that lawn mower.” Sex has nothing to do with “The meter of this poem is all f-ed up” or “The tip of this screwdriver is all f-ed up." Sex has nothing to do with the single word the mechanic utters when he drops his wrench down the silo onto the nuclear warhead, setting off a spark that ignites the leaking hydrogen fuel tank. So, understanding that the f word refers to the act of having sex won’t help you understand most of the ways the word is used. Likely, Klingon curse words are like that.
And charghwI' was right. Perhaps the actual meaning of an epithet isn't of importance. But what *is* of importance is its strength in relation to the other epithets. When is it to be said, and in reference to who ? (or is it to whom ? ah, forget it, I don't care..) I think, that in the same way we've been given the strength of each one of the verbs of fighting, we needed to be given the gravity of each epithet in relation to the rest. ~ Qa'yIn
When Okrand shared the epithets with us, he gave a vague sense of when different words would be used. Most word lists include some of these references. In boQwI’, for instance, for the entry for {Qu’vatlh}, it includes “Klingon curse, said in moments of extreme anger,” but it doesn’t include, if I remember correctly, “It’s a lot worse than, ‘Darn it.’” I think the explanations were in the published audio recording of Okrand that was called, “Conversational Klingon”, though this is just a vague, ancient memory. I can’t remember whether my copy was a CD or a cassette. I’m pretty sure it was a cassette, because I remember it was split between a side A and a side B. As for “to who” or “to whom”, technically, it should be “to whom”, since “whom” is the object form of the word and in this case, it’s acting as object of the preposition, but so many people screw up or don’t care, the word “whom” is probably in the process of being eliminated from the language, with “who” acting as both the subject and object form of the word. Keep in mind that this is tantamount to eliminating the word “me” and replacing it with “I”, using it for both subject and object form. The only reason who replacing whom is less jarring to us is that “I” and “me” are so commonly used that their irregular forms are more strongly fossilized in the language, while “who” and “whom” are used rarely enough that we’d rather get rid of the irregularity than try to keep it straight. When young children try to regularize irregular words (like saying “gooder” instead of “better”, or saying “Me want ice cream,” instead of “I want ice cream,"), we correct them, repeatedly and they learn the “right” word form for each usage. Apparently, parents of many current adults didn’t do that consistently with who/whom, so the difference hasn’t cemented itself into the vocabulary of many people, such as yourself. Note that preserving this difference between “me” and “I” is completely arbitrary. Many languages, like American Sign Language and Klingon, don’t distinguish between subject and object forms of pronouns. There are other cues as to whether the pronoun is a subject or an object besides the form of the word. In English, having the form of the pronouns different is one of the many areas of redundancy in the grammar, requiring one more element of agreement, making the language one notch more complicated to learn, giving people one more area to make grammatical mistakes that are wholly unnecessary. Because language is arbitrary, but it works best when we all agree on most stuff, though we will never agree on everything. charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.
On Jul 21, 2020, at 7:30 AM, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:
There's the person who hits the horn of his car calling you an a-hole as soon as the traffic lights go green.
There's the person who lies to your boss about you, in order to steal your promotion.
There's the person who steals someone else's life savings.
There's the person who lies in court sending an innocent man to jail.
And there's the person who commits crimes too heinous to even describe.
Who is the petaQ, who is the yIntagh, who is the toDSaH, who is the Qovpatlh, and who is the taHqeq ?
On a thread which started on november 06 2015 with the title "tlhIngan cursing", charghwI' had written:
Sex has nothing to do with the phrase, “Don’t f with me,” or “Don’t f with that lawn mower.” Sex has nothing to do with “The meter of this poem is all f-ed up” or “The tip of this screwdriver is all f-ed up." Sex has nothing to do with the single word the mechanic utters when he drops his wrench down the silo onto the nuclear warhead, setting off a spark that ignites the leaking hydrogen fuel tank. So, understanding that the f word refers to the act of having sex won’t help you understand most of the ways the word is used. Likely, Klingon curse words are like that.
And charghwI' was right. Perhaps the actual meaning of an epithet isn't of importance. But what *is* of importance is its strength in relation to the other epithets. When is it to be said, and in reference to who ? (or is it to whom ? ah, forget it, I don't care..)
I think, that in the same way we've been given the strength of each one of the verbs of fighting, we needed to be given the gravity of each epithet in relation to the rest.
~ Qa'yIn _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
On 7/21/2020 10:31 AM, Will Martin wrote:
Keep in mind that this is tantamount to eliminating the word “me” and replacing it with “I”, using it for both subject and object form.
Which is actually happening to a certain extent in the opposite direction. People are so used to saying /So-and-so and I/ that when they want to say something like /Tom saw me and Bill at the park/ they can't do it, so they say the "ungrammatical" /Tom saw Bill and I at the park./ You can do this now in almost any context and no one will even notice except prescriptivist grammar curmudgeons.
When young children try to regularize irregular words (like saying “gooder” instead of “better”, or saying “Me want ice cream,” instead of “I want ice cream,"), we correct them, repeatedly and they learn the “right” word form for each usage. Apparently, parents of many current adults didn’t do that consistently with who/whom, so the difference hasn’t cemented itself into the vocabulary of many people, such as yourself.
That's not what happens. For the most part, children are not taught language by their parents. They ACQUIRE language: their brains are wired to connect up to the language patterns they hear around them. If children don't acquire the /who/whom/ rule, it's mostly because the people around them aren't using the rule. English speakers have NEVER been particularly good at distinguishing between /who/ and /whom./ People have been breaking the rule as long as the rule has existed. And it's not just because /who/ and /whom/ are less common than /I/ and /me./ English pronouns have changed a HUGE amount over the centuries. The complex system of pronouns used in Old English shows this. There used to be dual first- and second-person pronouns. Most pronouns used to have separate accusative (direct object) and dative (indirect object) forms. /Who/, /what,/ and /which/ as interrogative pronouns used to have instrumental cases. There used to be another interrogative pronoun that meant /which of two?/ Relative pronouns /(who, that, which)/ used to be different from interrogative pronouns /(who, what, which)./ There used to be separate classes of indefinite pronouns /(anybody, everybody, everything, anything) /and negative pronouns /(nobody, nothing) /that had their own declinations. All of this is lost now. Not because parents forgot to teach their children about them, but because people change the way they speak the language, even within a single generation, and over time the changes add up. There's an interesting anecdote in a Stephen Pinker book in which he describes a child saying /gooder/ to her parent and the parent saying /gooder/ back to the child. The child stops and says the parent is saying it wrong; that's the way /I/ talk, not you. Language acquisition is so much more than just learning rules.
Note that preserving this difference between “me” and “I” is completely arbitrary.
It's not arbitrary. Language change happens for reasons, and those reasons are complex, but they're not arbitrary.
Many languages, like American Sign Language and Klingon, don’t distinguish between subject and object forms of pronouns. There are other cues as to whether the pronoun is a subject or an object besides the form of the word. In English, having the form of the pronouns different is one of the many areas of redundancy in the grammar, requiring one more element of agreement, making the language one notch more complicated to learn, giving people one more area to make grammatical mistakes that are wholly unnecessary.
The fact that so many languages include agreement, which you consider redundancy, suggests that there's a purpose to it, that it's not arbitrary at all. One good reason for agreement is that people are not digital computers. When you're listening to language, you're not necessarily processing and analyzing every single sound you hear. It's not that precise a process. Redundancy helps reinforce an expression. It's much easier to process *I am happy* than *me happy.* While *me happy* contains only the information I need, it's easier to mishear the sentence as *he happy* or *we happy* or *she happy* or even *Bea happy.* There is much less chance of such mistakes with *I am happy,* as you have two separate cues as to the person being described. (This is a simplistic example, and not the only reason for grammatical redundancies like agreement.) -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
While I agree with the possibility that all you say is right, I don’t accept the authority with which you speak as if your conclusions are final and unquestionable. I specifically remember being four years old and being corrected for having said “gooder”. Part of language acquisition is learning the rules, from which one concludes that “gooder” ought to be the correct form of the word. Another part of language acquisition is learning the exceptions to the regular rules for word formation. It’s been noted by people with much more authority than I have that irregular forms of words tend to persist among the most commonly used words and dissolve as words are used less often. Stockings are hung by the chimney with care, but men are hanged for murder. My wife finds that distinction extremely important, and she’s right, but given how common execution by hanging has been through many centuries of English and American culture, I strongly suspect that the rarity of modern usage will eventually erase it from the list of irregularities in the language. It may be the case that adults erase irregular words from the vocabulary, but based on my own memory of my “gooder” moment, it’s quite likely that if a child learns the rules for regular word forms and is not exposed to corrections for an irregular form, that’s a very natural overlap of language acquisition and language evolution, and it explains why less commonly used words become more regular, while very commonly used irregular words do not. I strongly suspect that you and I are not the only two people who disagree on this. charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.
On Jul 21, 2020, at 11:10 AM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 7/21/2020 10:31 AM, Will Martin wrote:
Keep in mind that this is tantamount to eliminating the word “me” and replacing it with “I”, using it for both subject and object form. Which is actually happening to a certain extent in the opposite direction. People are so used to saying So-and-so and I that when they want to say something like Tom saw me and Bill at the park they can't do it, so they say the "ungrammatical" Tom saw Bill and I at the park. You can do this now in almost any context and no one will even notice except prescriptivist grammar curmudgeons.
When young children try to regularize irregular words (like saying “gooder” instead of “better”, or saying “Me want ice cream,” instead of “I want ice cream,"), we correct them, repeatedly and they learn the “right” word form for each usage. Apparently, parents of many current adults didn’t do that consistently with who/whom, so the difference hasn’t cemented itself into the vocabulary of many people, such as yourself. That's not what happens. For the most part, children are not taught language by their parents. They ACQUIRE language: their brains are wired to connect up to the language patterns they hear around them. If children don't acquire the who/whom rule, it's mostly because the people around them aren't using the rule.
English speakers have NEVER been particularly good at distinguishing between who and whom. People have been breaking the rule as long as the rule has existed. And it's not just because who and whom are less common than I and me. English pronouns have changed a HUGE amount over the centuries. The complex system of pronouns used in Old English shows this. There used to be dual first- and second-person pronouns. Most pronouns used to have separate accusative (direct object) and dative (indirect object) forms. Who, what, and which as interrogative pronouns used to have instrumental cases. There used to be another interrogative pronoun that meant which of two? Relative pronouns (who, that, which) used to be different from interrogative pronouns (who, what, which). There used to be separate classes of indefinite pronouns (anybody, everybody, everything, anything) and negative pronouns (nobody, nothing) that had their own declinations. All of this is lost now. Not because parents forgot to teach their children about them, but because people change the way they speak the language, even within a single generation, and over time the changes add up.
There's an interesting anecdote in a Stephen Pinker book in which he describes a child saying gooder to her parent and the parent saying gooder back to the child. The child stops and says the parent is saying it wrong; that's the way I talk, not you. Language acquisition is so much more than just learning rules.
Note that preserving this difference between “me” and “I” is completely arbitrary. It's not arbitrary. Language change happens for reasons, and those reasons are complex, but they're not arbitrary.
Many languages, like American Sign Language and Klingon, don’t distinguish between subject and object forms of pronouns. There are other cues as to whether the pronoun is a subject or an object besides the form of the word. In English, having the form of the pronouns different is one of the many areas of redundancy in the grammar, requiring one more element of agreement, making the language one notch more complicated to learn, giving people one more area to make grammatical mistakes that are wholly unnecessary. The fact that so many languages include agreement, which you consider redundancy, suggests that there's a purpose to it, that it's not arbitrary at all. One good reason for agreement is that people are not digital computers. When you're listening to language, you're not necessarily processing and analyzing every single sound you hear. It's not that precise a process. Redundancy helps reinforce an expression. It's much easier to process *I am happy* than *me happy.* While *me happy* contains only the information I need, it's easier to mishear the sentence as *he happy* or *we happy* or *she happy* or even *Bea happy.* There is much less chance of such mistakes with *I am happy,* as you have two separate cues as to the person being described. (This is a simplistic example, and not the only reason for grammatical redundancies like agreement.)
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
On 7/21/2020 11:38 AM, Will Martin wrote:
While I agree with the possibility that all you say is right, I don’t accept the authority with which you speak as if your conclusions are final and unquestionable.
I am not speaking with authority. I'm just some guy on an archaic Internet mailing list. When they teach you good writing style in school, they teach you not to be wishy-washy. I don't claim to be a good writer, but aren't you the one who's always complaining about "vague, wittering, and indecisive" writing?
I specifically remember being four years old and being corrected for having said “gooder”. Part of language acquisition is learning the rules,
No. "Language acquisition" is a specific process of the brain which is different than "language learning." A child might obey after being told, usually repeatedly, not to say /gooder./ But they ACQUIRED the general superlative-making rule before they learned an exception. And most children, when they aren't corrected by parents or teachers, will eventually acquire the exceptions too. I don't correct my son's grammar, and he DOES say things like /gooder,/ and as time goes on he drops them all on his own. This is a natural process, not a matter of learning rules.
from which one concludes that “gooder” ought to be the correct form of the word. Another part of language acquisition is learning the exceptions to the regular rules for word formation. It’s been noted by people with much more authority than I have that irregular forms of words tend to persist among the most commonly used words and dissolve as words are used less often.
That's correct: commonly used irregular forms tend to persist. And why are they the most commonly used? Because they're core to the language. THEY PREDATE THE RULE. English words like /run/ran, begin/began/begun, /and /blow/blew/blown/,//not to mention /be/am/is/are/was/were/being/been/ had these forms, or something like them, before there was an "add /-d/ to form the past tense" rule. It is NATURAL for human brains to think in terms of separate forms for these functions. Regular rules came later. Language according to regular rules is not how our brains work.
Stockings are hung by the chimney with care, but men are hanged for murder. My wife finds that distinction extremely important, and she’s right, but given how common execution by hanging has been through many centuries of English and American culture, I strongly suspect that the rarity of modern usage will eventually erase it from the list of irregularities in the language.
Actually, the word /hanged/ is the one that's disappearing, changing to /hung/ in all circumstances, even execution. That means the IRREGULAR form is the one that's winning out. Another example is /proved/ or /proven/ as the participle form of /prove./ In Britain, they tend to prefer /proved/ (which is also the only past tense form), and American style guides clearly advocate /proved./ But you can still use /proven/ almost anywhere, even though the form is slowly disappearing.
It may be the case that adults erase irregular words from the vocabulary,
That is not the case. They just learn when to apply the rule and when not to. Usually.
but based on my own memory of my “gooder” moment, it’s quite likely that if a child learns the rules for regular word forms and is not exposed to corrections for an irregular form, that’s a very natural overlap of language acquisition and language evolution, and it explains why less commonly used words become more regular, while very commonly used irregular words do not.
There are all sorts of reasons why less commonly used words might become more regular. It's also the case that less commonly used words become irregular. Less commonly used words are encountered less commonly, therefore the population has less exposure to it and less reason to assimilate a particular form. It's the core words, the really basic words, in English usually the Germanic words, that have the most inertia, and those are much more likely to have irregular forms. All this is to say that "parents failed to teach children the proper rules" is an absurd explanation for language change. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
On Tue, 21 Jul 2020 at 16:31, Will Martin <willmartin2@mac.com> wrote:
When Okrand shared the epithets with us, he gave a vague sense of when different words would be used. Most word lists include some of these references. In boQwI’, for instance, for the entry for {Qu’vatlh}, it includes “Klingon curse, said in moments of extreme anger,” but it doesn’t include, if I remember correctly, “It’s a lot worse than, ‘Darn it.’”
You're thinking of {ghuy'cha'}. -- De'vID
participants (4)
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De'vID -
mayqel qunen'oS -
SuStel -
Will Martin