On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 7:05 AM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
I know what is going on in that sentence. A crescendo. I understood it the first time I saw it.
Sure, it's pretty clearly supposed to mean a crescendo, even if you don't read the English on the Skybox card. ("...and others roar in a great crescendo.") I meant the grammatical structure of the phrase *beyHom bey bey'a'* itself. I don't think there's any other examples of a series of nouns being used on their own to express that a thing is changing over time. It doesn't really make sense as an appositional phrase or a noun-noun construction. It looks like it could be an "and" phrase, but there's no *je*. The proverb *bogh tlhInganpu', SuvwI'pu' moj, Hegh* uses sentences in a series to convey events over time without a conjunction, but those are complete thoughts, and there's no reason they couldn't be written as distinct sentences. Is the expression *beyHom bey bey'a'* generalizable?
On 10/10/2017 10:50 AM, nIqolay Q wrote:
On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 7:05 AM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name <mailto:sustel@trimboli.name>> wrote:
I know what is going on in that sentence. A crescendo. I understood it the first time I saw it.
Is the expression *beyHom bey bey'a'* generalizable?
No idea. But that's a very different thing than saying nobody understands what's going on with the phrase. About the /only/ think we don't know is whether it can be generalized. We do similar things in English, and I've never heard a formal grammatical description of them (though one doubtless exists somewhere). I am immediately reminded of this quotation from /Doctor Who:/ That's right, yes, you're going. You've gone for ages, you've already gone, you're still here, just arrived, haven't even met you yet. It all depends on who you are and how you look at it. Strange business, time. Or here's a headline I just came across: The Sights, The Sounds, The Sexiness Of The Alfa Romeo Giulia Qaudrifoglio There are lots of things like this. If someone were to write *Duj Do'a' Do DoHom vIjuv* for /I measure the ship's deceleration,/ would I balk? No. I might even use it myself. Do I know for sure that it's right? No, but it /feels/ right, it doesn't violate any rules, and it is unmistakable. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
Am 10.10.2017 um 17:20 schrieb SuStel:
Do I know for sure that it's right? No, but it /feels/ right, it doesn't violate any rules, and it is unmistakable.
That's what you always blame me for doing. Gotcha! :-P -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.klingonisch.net http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/StarTrekDiscovery
On 10/10/2017 11:32 AM, Lieven wrote:
Am 10.10.2017 um 17:20 schrieb SuStel:
Do I know for sure that it's right? No, but it /feels/ right, it doesn't violate any rules, and it is unmistakable.
That's what you always blame me for doing. Gotcha! :-P
I'm not advocating generalizing the example, only saying that it /feels/ right to me. I'm not trying to convince anyone to use it or to accept it. When /you/ make "feeling" statements, some rule or observed feature is always a casualty. "I feel like third-person object prefixes should participate in the prefix trick, and I'm going to twist Okrand's very clear explanation into something that supports that." /My/ "feeling" statement here breaks no rule, tosses out no canon, AND has precedent, and I'm not even trying to convince anyone it's right. It's JUST a feeling. So no, not the same thing. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
Am 10.10.2017 um 17:52 schrieb SuStel:
and I'm not even trying to convince anyone it's right. It's JUST a feeling.
I'll quote your words the next time you tell me that my feeling does not count. -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.klingonisch.net http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/Feeling
On 10/10/2017 11:57 AM, Lieven wrote:
Am 10.10.2017 um 17:52 schrieb SuStel:
and I'm not even trying to convince anyone it's right. It's JUST a feeling.
I'll quote your words the next time you tell me that my feeling does not count.
You do that. No doubt you'll oversimplify whatever I say and proceed to knock down a straw man. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 11:20 AM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
If someone were to write *Duj Do'a' Do DoHom vIjuv* for *I measure the ship's deceleration,* would I balk? No. I might even use it myself. Do I know for sure that it's right? No, but it *feels* right, it doesn't violate any rules, and it is unmistakable.
It feels right to me too. Mostly, I just wanted to express to mayqel that it was an unusual phrase that we didn't know the specific details of, and that there really wasn't a whole lot we knew for sure about the internal logic of the construction as it relates to other noun constructions. Just out of curiosity, what kinds of "noun series" modelled along variations of *beyHom bey bey'a'* would also feel right or wrong to you (and other Klingonists reading this)? - Using a *-Hom/-0/-'a'* series in a non-direct-object role, e.g.: *Qe' chu' luSuchtaH ghomHom ghom ghom'a'* *"Bigger and bigger crowds visited the new restaurant; the new restaurant drew ever-increasing crowds."* - Using a different set of suffixes that suggest some other kind of spectrum, e.g.: *qa'qoq qa'Hey qa' qa'na' vIleghtaH* *"I was dismissive of the idea at first but I am increasingly certain that I'm seeing an actual spirit."* (This is an awkward translation.) - Not using the same base noun but with a series implied anyway, e.g.: *jajlo' po pov tlhom puH DujDaj tI'taH **"He worked on his car from dawn to dusk." *(This example also uses a non-direct-object series, in this case a series of timestamps.) - Nouns that only imply a series in context: *'awje' qa'vIn wornagh DItlhutlhtaH* *"We started with 'root beer', then had coffee, and then we drank warnog."*
On 10/10/2017 12:00 PM, nIqolay Q wrote:
Just out of curiosity, what kinds of "noun series" modelled along variations of *beyHom bey bey'a'* would also feel right or wrong to you (and other Klingonists reading this)?
* Using a *-Hom/-0/-'a'* series in a non-direct-object role, e.g.: *Qe' chu' luSuchtaH ghomHom ghom ghom'a'* /"Bigger and bigger crowds visited the new restaurant; the new restaurant drew ever-increasing crowds."/
Works for me. I don't think its position in the sentence has any bearing on how it's interpreted.
* Using a different set of suffixes that suggest some other kind of spectrum, e.g.: *qa'qoq qa'Hey qa' qa'na' vIleghtaH* /"I was dismissive of the idea at first but I am increasingly certain that I'm seeing an actual spirit."/ (This is an awkward translation.)
I don't see these as a spectrum, and these suffixes don't express what I thought of the nouns at the time; they tell what I think of them when I say the sentence. At best I would interpret this as my seeing something someone called a spirit but wasn't, then something I think was a spirit, then a spirit, then something that was definitely a spirit. I'm seeing different things in sequence. But there's no natural interpretation of these as a sequence, so my instinct would be add a conjunction afterward and explain the sequence separately.
* Not using the same base noun but with a series implied anyway, e.g.: *jajlo' po pov tlhom puH DujDaj tI'taH */"He worked on his car from dawn to dusk." /(This example also uses a non-direct-object series, in this case a series of timestamps.)
Because the sequence is obvious, I could accept this. I would expect this to be received something like "*jajlo' *(ok)*po* (all morning, huh?) *pov* (wow, long time!) *tlhom* (still going?!) *puH DujDaj tI'taH.*
* Nouns that only imply a series in context: *'awje' qa'vIn wornagh DItlhutlhtaH* /"We started with 'root beer', then had coffee, and then we drank warnog."/
Same reaction as with the time stamps. *'awje'* (ok) *qa'vIn* (still going?) *wornagh* (wow, all that?!)*DItlhutlhtaH.* But this one really wouldn't make any difference if you conjoined them with *je:* the sense of sequence is not very strong. But none of these strikes me as so simply unambiguous as the howl-crescendo. You have to work at interpreting them. Stringing along nouns isn't just a listed sequence; it's a single concept expressed in a sequence of related words. The concept isn't "sequence"; it's "thing that changes in this sequential way." -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 12:18 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
Works for me. I don't think its position in the sentence has any bearing on how it's interpreted.
Same, I figured this was the least-controversial variation that I posted.
I don't see these as a spectrum, and these suffixes don't express what I thought of the nouns at the time; they tell what I think of them when I say the sentence.
It's interesting that you don't see these suffixes as a spectrum. I thought it was a good example of a spectrum of something like "increasing belief on my part that this thing can or should be described by this noun", from *-qoq* ("obviously not such a thing") to *-na'* ("definitely such a thing"). That's a good point about how they apply at the time of speaking, though. (At first I was going to argue that in the right context they could be taken to mean "what I thought of them at the time", like if they were contrasted with each other in some kind of temporal sequence, but I think that's mostly just because I really liked that example and want to salvage it somehow.)
Same reaction as with the time stamps. *'awje'* (ok) *qa'vIn* (still going?) *wornagh* (wow, all that?!)* DItlhutlhtaH.* But this one really wouldn't make any difference if you conjoined them with *je:* the sense of sequence is not very strong.
This is also the example I liked least.
The concept isn't "sequence"; it's "thing that changes in this sequential way."
That's a good distinction to keep in mind.
On 10/10/2017 12:51 PM, nIqolay Q wrote:
I don't see these as a spectrum, and these suffixes don't express what I thought of the nouns at the time; they tell what I think of them when I say the sentence.
It's interesting that you don't see these suffixes as a spectrum. I thought it was a good example of a spectrum of something like "increasing belief on my part that this thing can or should be described by this noun", from *-qoq* ("obviously not such a thing") to *-na'* ("definitely such a thing"). That's a good point about how they apply at the time of speaking, though. (At first I was going to argue that in the right context they could be taken to mean "what I thought of them at the time", like if they were contrasted with each other in some kind of temporal sequence, but I think that's mostly just because I really liked that example and want to salvage it somehow.)
Noun qualification suffixes applying to what a participant in the sentence is not a complete impossibility, though I don't like it. We've seen hints of similar in the verb qualification suffixes. But we haven't actually seen anything like this in nouns so far as I know, so no point trying to find a way to make it so. You might construct a similar argument based on aspect suffixes and *-ghach:* *SuvchoHghach SuvtaHghach Suvpu'ghach* for something like /fight from start to finish./ There's an unmistakable sequence here, but it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. And with this one there's actually little point to nominalizing it; just say *SuvchoH SuvtaH Suvpu'.* Interpret it with full stops after each word if you must. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
SuStel:
If someone were to write *Duj Do'a' Do DoHom vIjuv* for *I * *> measure the ship's deceleration*
*I can'understand this; all I read is "I measure the ship's great speed, speed, lesser speed"* *mayqel q* On Oct 10, 2017 8:09 PM, "SuStel" <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 10/10/2017 12:51 PM, nIqolay Q wrote:
I don't see these as a spectrum, and these suffixes don't express what I
thought of the nouns at the time; they tell what I think of them when I say the sentence.
It's interesting that you don't see these suffixes as a spectrum. I thought it was a good example of a spectrum of something like "increasing belief on my part that this thing can or should be described by this noun", from *-qoq* ("obviously not such a thing") to *-na'* ("definitely such a thing"). That's a good point about how they apply at the time of speaking, though. (At first I was going to argue that in the right context they could be taken to mean "what I thought of them at the time", like if they were contrasted with each other in some kind of temporal sequence, but I think that's mostly just because I really liked that example and want to salvage it somehow.)
Noun qualification suffixes applying to what a participant in the sentence is not a complete impossibility, though I don't like it. We've seen hints of similar in the verb qualification suffixes. But we haven't actually seen anything like this in nouns so far as I know, so no point trying to find a way to make it so.
You might construct a similar argument based on aspect suffixes and *-ghach:* *SuvchoHghach SuvtaHghach Suvpu'ghach* for something like *fight from start to finish.* There's an unmistakable sequence here, but it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. And with this one there's actually little point to nominalizing it; just say *SuvchoH SuvtaH Suvpu'.* Interpret it with full stops after each word if you must.
-- SuStelhttp://trimboli.name
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On 10/10/2017 2:33 PM, mayqel qunenoS wrote:
SuStel:
If someone were to write *Duj Do'a' Do DoHom vIjuv* for /I / /> measure the ship's deceleration/ / / /I can'understand this; all I read is "I measure the ship's great speed, speed, lesser speed"/
Looks like you understood it perfectly. :) Just picture it in your head. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
2017-10-10 20:33 GMT+02:00 mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun@gmail.com>:
SuStel:
If someone were to write *Duj Do'a' Do DoHom vIjuv* for *I * *> measure the ship's deceleration*
*I can'understand this; all I read is "I measure the ship's great speed, speed, lesser speed"*
*mayqel q*
This is also the only thing I am grasping there. It would not make sense to me. It sounds either like a mere list, or like a NNN construction meaning "I measure the lesser speed of the speed of the greater speed of the ship." Neither of which makes sense. Maybe that ship has only 3 speed modes, slow pace, middle pace, and full speed, and I could measure what they are (e.g. half impulse, full impulse, and warp 1). Interpreting something like "deceleration" into seems like a big stretch. Like linguistic fan fiction. - André
On Oct 10, 2017 8:09 PM, "SuStel" <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 10/10/2017 12:51 PM, nIqolay Q wrote:
I don't see these as a spectrum, and these suffixes don't express what I
thought of the nouns at the time; they tell what I think of them when I say the sentence.
It's interesting that you don't see these suffixes as a spectrum. I thought it was a good example of a spectrum of something like "increasing belief on my part that this thing can or should be described by this noun", from *-qoq* ("obviously not such a thing") to *-na'* ("definitely such a thing"). That's a good point about how they apply at the time of speaking, though. (At first I was going to argue that in the right context they could be taken to mean "what I thought of them at the time", like if they were contrasted with each other in some kind of temporal sequence, but I think that's mostly just because I really liked that example and want to salvage it somehow.)
Noun qualification suffixes applying to what a participant in the sentence is not a complete impossibility, though I don't like it. We've seen hints of similar in the verb qualification suffixes. But we haven't actually seen anything like this in nouns so far as I know, so no point trying to find a way to make it so.
You might construct a similar argument based on aspect suffixes and *-ghach:* *SuvchoHghach SuvtaHghach Suvpu'ghach* for something like *fight from start to finish.* There's an unmistakable sequence here, but it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. And with this one there's actually little point to nominalizing it; just say *SuvchoH SuvtaH Suvpu'.* Interpret it with full stops after each word if you must.
-- SuStelhttp://trimboli.name
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SuStel:
Just picture it in your head.
hmm.. I think I understand. Like someone seeing a ship decelerate, and each of his words refers to a specific "screenshot", of the deceleration event. maj. mayqel q On Oct 10, 2017 9:44 PM, "André Müller" <esperantist@gmail.com> wrote:
2017-10-10 20:33 GMT+02:00 mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun@gmail.com>:
SuStel:
If someone were to write *Duj Do'a' Do DoHom vIjuv* for *I * *> measure the ship's deceleration*
*I can'understand this; all I read is "I measure the ship's great speed, speed, lesser speed"*
*mayqel q*
This is also the only thing I am grasping there. It would not make sense to me. It sounds either like a mere list, or like a NNN construction meaning "I measure the lesser speed of the speed of the greater speed of the ship." Neither of which makes sense. Maybe that ship has only 3 speed modes, slow pace, middle pace, and full speed, and I could measure what they are (e.g. half impulse, full impulse, and warp 1).
Interpreting something like "deceleration" into seems like a big stretch. Like linguistic fan fiction.
- André
On Oct 10, 2017 8:09 PM, "SuStel" <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 10/10/2017 12:51 PM, nIqolay Q wrote:
I don't see these as a spectrum, and these suffixes don't express what I
thought of the nouns at the time; they tell what I think of them when I say the sentence.
It's interesting that you don't see these suffixes as a spectrum. I thought it was a good example of a spectrum of something like "increasing belief on my part that this thing can or should be described by this noun", from *-qoq* ("obviously not such a thing") to *-na'* ("definitely such a thing"). That's a good point about how they apply at the time of speaking, though. (At first I was going to argue that in the right context they could be taken to mean "what I thought of them at the time", like if they were contrasted with each other in some kind of temporal sequence, but I think that's mostly just because I really liked that example and want to salvage it somehow.)
Noun qualification suffixes applying to what a participant in the sentence is not a complete impossibility, though I don't like it. We've seen hints of similar in the verb qualification suffixes. But we haven't actually seen anything like this in nouns so far as I know, so no point trying to find a way to make it so.
You might construct a similar argument based on aspect suffixes and *-ghach:* *SuvchoHghach SuvtaHghach Suvpu'ghach* for something like *fight from start to finish.* There's an unmistakable sequence here, but it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. And with this one there's actually little point to nominalizing it; just say *SuvchoH SuvtaH Suvpu'.* Interpret it with full stops after each word if you must.
-- SuStelhttp://trimboli.name
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On 10/10/2017 2:51 PM, mayqel qunenoS wrote:
SuStel:
[Duj Do Do'a' DuHom vIjuv]
Just picture it in your head.
hmm.. I think I understand. Like someone seeing a ship decelerate, and each of his words refers to a specific "screenshot", of the deceleration event. maj.
Doq bIQtIq bIQ! -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
On 10/10/2017 2:44 PM, André Müller wrote:
2017-10-10 20:33 GMT+02:00 mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun@gmail.com <mailto:mihkoun@gmail.com>>:
SuStel: > If someone were to write *Duj Do'a' Do DoHom vIjuv* for /I / /> measure the ship's deceleration/ / / /I can'understand this; all I read is "I measure the ship's great speed, speed, lesser speed"/ / / /mayqel q/
This is also the only thing I am grasping there. It would not make sense to me. It sounds either like a mere list, or like a NNN construction meaning "I measure the lesser speed of the speed of the greater speed of the ship." Neither of which makes sense. Maybe that ship has only 3 speed modes, slow pace, middle pace, and full speed, and I could measure what they are (e.g. half impulse, full impulse, and warp 1).
Interpreting something like "deceleration" into seems like a big stretch. Like linguistic fan fiction.
If Okrand WERE to say "yes, you can generalize what I did with *beyHom bey bey'a',*" would you understand it? -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
participants (5)
-
André Müller -
Lieven -
mayqel qunenoS -
nIqolay Q -
SuStel