Re: Extra-planetary translation project Saul Epstein Wed, 13 May 1998 10:19:36 -0500 Quotes from: MDriest Date: Tuesday, May 12, 1998 8:04 PM >Quotes from Saul: > >[about the loss of long/short distinctions] >>In a sense, yes. Having actually heard Marketa's >>pronunciation, my tentative analysis removes the "short" (or >>"long," depending on your perspective) vowels as separate >>phonemes from the "long" (or "short") ones. I never have >>gotten around to sifting through all the data, that's >>something I should get back to... > >I say. Well, if Marketa's pronunciation does not exhibit this >distinction, what are we to do? It is a shame, though. It felt >really Vulcan to me. I hope it's clear that the "long" and "short" PHONES are still present. (At least for /i/ and /e/. There seem to be similar "doubles" for the other vowels, with the likely exception of /u/.) When I said "collapse," I referred to the combination of the V/V: pairs as allophones of a smaller set of PHONEMES. That is, it seems to be the case that a phoneme /i/ is pronounced as what was labelled [i] in some contexts and [i:] in others. >>(Something else I noticed was that <'> literally >>lengthened the preceding vowel -- if any -- rather than >>changing its position as <:> was supposed to. Which is why I >>suggested using -a' as a suffix distinct from -a...) > >That may well be. I tried it and got similar results. No, I meant I noticed this in Marketa's pronunciation of words with <'> in them. Not that it is somehow automatic. >The one problem >is that we then have to distinguish in writing between the character >a and the character a' or import the ' as an independent character. >If we reach consensus on this I see no reason not to have -a' as a suffix. Well, in the transcription, <'> is already an independent character... >[about my ideas of male/female symmetrie] >I mean words which point at a biological entity. Aunt/uncle is a >good example. The Vulcans are very, VERY precise people. Their genealogies >are much more exact and certainly longer and more reliable then ours. >I say words for family members differ for males and females. Not for >matrilineal or patrilineal reasons but simply to be as exact as possible. With apologies to the more logical among us, it is impossible to be as exact as possible. Exactitude is local: it depends on significance. It would make more sense, I think, for Vulcans to be as exact as necessary, as useful. Aunts and uncles are less biological entities than cultural entities. And if one's aunts are responsible for arranging her betrothal while her uncles are responsible for guiding her to an occupation, or if her mother's sibling's children are governed by incest taboo while her father's sibling's children aren't -- these are worth noting, worth naming. If the only difference between an aunt and an uncle is their biological gender, that makes as little difference as it would for a doctor or a farmer. So it seems to me, anyway. >Is there a difference for animals? Or do Vulcans say: Look, a male sehlat! Probably the latter. If the gender of the sehlat were important. >And what about 'priestess'? As far as I understand, men cannot be a >priest. Hey! The Vulcans are inverted Catholics! ;=) Really? That's... interesting. Lends a lot of support to the idea that the dominant Vulcan culture is matrilineal. Depending on what the exact role of the priesthood is. >I propose to go back to the SevTrek-joke. I am quite happy >with the last translation. If no one has any problems, we >can fit in the new words and go on to the next. I was about to make a similar suggestion. I'd like to get at least this one to John "Sev" Cook fairly quickly... -- from Saul Epstein locus*planetkc,com www,jccc,net/~sepstein "Surak ow'phaaper thes'hi thes'tca'; thes'phaadjar thes'hi suraketca'." -- K'dvarin Urswhl'at