Re: Is the Sev Trek 2 translation ready? (and catagories of Rob Zook Fri, 26 Jun 1998 09:37:41 -0500 At 10:14 PM 6/25/98 -0500, Saul Epstein wrote: >Quotes from: Rob Zook < >Date: Thursday, June 25, 1998 4:27 PM > >> English: >> Gaudy: Beta, can I ask you a personal question? >> Beta: Of course, Gaudy. >> Gaudy: Are you IBM compatible? >> >> Vulcan: >> Gaudi: th'nidroijia goifa jidokhti beta'a >> Beta: s'nidroima gaudi'a >> Gaudi: qa s'izgezu ibumusko >> >>Does anyone see anything else wrong with this translation? > >As you suggested in your last post on the subject, < should >take -< in the first sentence, as the direct (or Accusative) >object of <. However, I'm not sure the word needs to be there >at all. In English (and other IE languages) we use "to ask" to refer >to inquiries AND requests, but this is hardly necessary. If < >specifically refers to the act of asking a question (as opposed to >asking a favor, for which there could be an unrelated word) we could >leave out a direct object in this case, and the sentence could mean >something like "Can I inquire..." Well, I can find nothing wrong with that, I was trying to do a literal translation of the English. Also, I thought that the way it is makes it a good formal form for the breaching of privacy. It depends on how formal Vulcan's would get in that kind of situation, and since neither Gaudy or Beta are Vulcan it that kind of ritual may not even apply. I think I meantioned something like this previously, but we could do something like this: Gaudi: th'nidroijia beta'a Beta: ah'ah Gaudi'a So Guadi says literally: "may I ask, Beta?", and Beta replies with a intensively reduplicated yes, which I would take as meaning: "of course". >Also, could you go a bit into what -< and < do? Well, I was thinking of -jia as a part of a set of suffixes having to do with permissive/prohibitive verbs. In the ZC we have a little blurb on them: 9. Negative verb Morpheme -infix I e,g. th'rIan - 'I don't kill' rIankah - 'Do not Kill!' 6,5 Action/State words have the following basic forms. 1. STEM; e,g. Kroy (stop) Ran (kill), Kapra (calculate) 2. IMPERARIVE; ,e,g. rankah (ran-kah) 'Kill!' PROHIBITIVE e,g. rIankah (see above) 3. PERMISIVE; e,g. Kroma (Kroy-ma) 'may stop' 4. VERB-NOUN; e,g. ranat (Ran-at) ' killing' So we already have a "may" and "may not" we can attached to a verb, like: < "you may stop", and < "you may not stop". I had meant the -jia to be a kind of ? in the middle of the verb for a [permissive] value positive or negative. But I guess we don't need to have that kind of structure if we can say: qa th'nidroima "[Is it true?] I may ask" I think then that: Gaudy: qa th'nidroima jitokh'hi Beta'a May be best to distinguish from forms of askings like you meantioned: qa th'nidroima [favor]'hi qa th'nidroima [forgiveness]'hi >I understand your objection to using -< as a casual conditional >(though I think it would not be a problem in the Ambiguous Mode). But >does the Formal Mode make any kind of provisions for this sort of >thing? Would an Ek-structure be applicable to something like: > > >Gaudy: yarapu ci'goifa th'nidroi'icek, yarabu pujia'ek > P-labels (invasively I-inquire)-if, B-labels P-is-permitted-if > (P="I ask an invasive question;" B=permitted(P); If B then P.) > >Beta: bu'a' > B. > >Gaudy: az pu'a: qa s'izgezu ibumusko > Therefore P: Are you IBM-compatible? If we where to do this in a formal Vulcan argument form, I would say it like this: Guady: pu ci goifa th'nidroima jitokh'hi ic bu s'[permit] bu'ek pu'ek Beta: bu'ah Or since it's already pretty short, one could just use the parenthesis and the logical connectives: Gaudy: ^ci qa th'nidroima jitok'hi icek s'[pemit]'ek Beta: ^[permit]'ah Guady: az qa s'izgezu ibumusko I think that does work as a valid argument. In English it sounds a little awkward: "If it is permitted then may I ask a question? It is permitted. Therefore, 'are you IBM compatable'?". However, I think the logic of the argument seems valid, and I like the idea of splitting the argument up between two speakers this way. Did we talk about < before and I forgot, or is this something new you want to add? BTW, I only of mentioned it as an afterthought in my "logical vulcan" post, but putting that little <<^> at the beginning of a premise would probably help clue in the listener that one is starting a formal argument form of conversation. >> Also, Saul had proposed the suffix -sko for the "with" kind of >> instrumental object. Since the general indirect objects we have >> already, can have much more specific meanings. I had been wondering >> can the various kind of objects be divided into well defined >> catagories? > >Probably. My inclination regarding "with" is similar to that >regarding "ask:" I see pieces of the languages with which we're most >familiar committing some lumpings-together that are more glaringly >arbitrary than others (sometimes with unfortunate implications). >Drawing lines between categories in different but still sensible >places seems an easy way to keep Vulcan from being too much like >Terran languages, particularly Indo-European ones. This is why I >didn't want a "together with" suffix to look like the "by means of" >suffix: I'd like the former to be a different kind of "indirect" >object altogether, perhaps an associative case, with no relation to >the instrumental. Makes sense. Do you have a list of "recognized" types of objects of verbs somewhere. I found a list of latin ones which may help or not. Most of them seem pretty familiar, and I think it would help Vulcan to have some pretty unfamiliar ones too - although of what kind I'm not sure. >> Knowing the indirect object catagory might be enough if the >> sentence makes the meaning fairly obvious. While the specific >> indirect object would make it easy to speak very precisely without >> obfustication or overcomplication. >> >> Comments? > >I think this would work very well, though I might prefer that the >specifiers be set off as separate words, for the sake of various >kinds of clarity. I just hope I'm getting across that I'd like, with >the unrelated -ti and -sko, to make it impossible for a Vulcan to >say, "I walk with Surak," and for another to interpret this to mean >that the speaker uses Surak as a cane or a walking stick. Yeah, I can see that. In the context of what I said about catagorizing the various kinds of objects, you mean that -ti and -sko should head, or at least be in different catagories. Rob Z. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another. -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_