Re: Extra-planetary translation project Rob Zook Tue, 12 May 1998 15:37:30 -0500 At 02:07 PM 5/10/98 -0400, MDriest wrote: >What is this -wimic? When we pull data from thin air, we need to >incorporate it in our project. OK, it's canon, but I feel that the >Vulcan we hear on film is not that useful in all instances. No, most of the movie vulcan does not seem very useful, however, the stuff in ST:II and ST:III was designed by Marc Okrand, and thus not quite the garbled gobbledy-gook in ST:TMP. We already have one word in the dictionary which comes from the dialog between Saavik and Spock in ST:II - "human". Also used in the dictionary (and in one or more of the TOS books I think), is the diminutive suffix -kam. That sets a precedent for this kind of adoption. The suffix -wimic "self-indentification" is a guess I made based on the context of Saavik's words to the reborn Spock in ST:III. Sa'avikwimic kumps d'liben "I am Saavik, can you speak?" Since Vulcan (according the the ZC) has no verb "to be", wimic could not mean "I am", so it must mean something else. The -wimic then seems like a perfect candidate for a vocalic meaning self-identification, especially considering it's association with her name. That and a couple of other possiblities in ST:II and ST:III seem useful enough to keep. >For example, >the speech made by the high priestess in the beginning of ST:IV >contains many riddles, against-canon material and blatant errors. Plus some artificial distortion, I think. >I do not say we lose the -wimic. I merely point out it should fit >in with the rest we have. How does it not "fit in"? >There is a significant risk that we will develop fluent speakers of >Vulcan (or w~l'q'n if you like) who cannot understand a word of what >is said by the StarTrek-Vulcans. Paramount will never accept such >a language. (I doubt if they will in any case...) Unless "Paramount", or the Star Trek concerned part of Paramount adopt our version of Vulcan, I would say that no risk is involved - it's inevidable that our Vulcan would have no particular resembalence to stuff spoken in the movies or series. I really wish they would take our version as canon. That would be wonderful, to help make a part of the canon ST universe. But I do this here, simply because I love languages. Generally, I don't give a rat's ass what "Paramount" thinks. "Paramount" behaves in a generally unsane, and irrational way since it makes decisions with a commitee, and I believe as Heinlein did, that a committe is a beastie with 6 or more legs and no brains. >BTW. Rob, I'd like to know just how this wonderous program exactly >works. Could you give us at least a broad overview of its wee bairns? Sure. When this list first started, we did some very basic statistical analysis of the words in the dictionary. I wrote a little program to pull all the words in and do a frequency distribution of each phoneme (those letters we considered phonemes at the time). Another program did the same thing with the distribution of the syllable structure of each word. Using that as a base, I wrote a little Java application which takes the frequency distributions and spits out a word that was pseudo-randomly generated. If we take all the words my program generates and run them thru the earlier frequency distribution program we should see a very similar distribution of letters and syllable types. So the words the program makes should when spoken "sound" like the Vulcan from TOS, the movies and the TOS books. Rob Z.