Jokes in Vulcan
MDriest 
Tue, 12 May 1998 20:32:36 -0400

Greetings fellow linguists,

I've got a puzzle for you. I gave it some thought but did not come to a
conclusion.

I picked up the following joke on Red Dwarf.
Lister: Rimmer, the escape pod is not an option!
Rimmer: Why not?
Lister: It escaped last thirsday.

Ha ha ha. Yes, I found it funny too. But then the thought occurred to me:=

"Is this possible in Vulcan?"
Well, is it? For certain practical reasons, we could keep the language
open to any concept we wish to translate directly. But, in a really alien=

language some things are naturally closed to our languages. English,
in our case. We should try not to make Vulcan too English.
Also, Vulcan itself is bound to have some untranslatable constructions.

Strictly speaking, the pod is not capable of escaping. Only sentient
entities are capable of that act. Is it in any way possible for a
device to be the subject of an active verb? =

(There is propably another kind of 'escaping' for animals with little or =
no
sentience.)
Then there is the matter of what we mean by 'escape'.
Is it: - escaping out of holding (prison)
        - escaping from an attacker
        - escaping/fleeing disaster
        - escaping in general?
       etc. etc.  Is there a system to this?

I feel strongly that Vulcan should make these distinction. I am not
entirely sure if the aforementioned verbs should be quite different
or only differ slightly, as is the case in Russian. In Russian, there
often is a 'ground-verb' which can be fitted with a number of
prefixes making the translation subtly different each time. IMO,
this is a marvellous system.

Of course, with exact meanings to verbs like I described, the
joke from Red Dwarf is quite impossible to translate.  Tough!
But does this endanger the famous Vulcan irony?

Sorahl
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=

If Tomorrow is Yesterday, then what will last Tuesday be?