A FAQ So Far Saul Epstein Sun, 16 Aug 1998 12:03:31 -0500 I haven't done any work on this in weeks, but I thought yall should see it: The VALD FAQ What is VALD? (S. Epstein: Incomplete) ..,goals, constraints, authorities The Terran Office of the Vulcan Academy Linguistics Department studies Vulcan language in an ongoing attempt to describe it for the benefit of Terrans who wish to learn Vulcan language, or who wish to learn from Vulcan through its language. ===== What Are the Primary Sources for Vulcan? ..,how were/are they used? I'd like to invite Marketa to get this section started, as she is the one of us who was there at the beginning. (So, a list of the novels which words came from, and anything you feel like sharing about how you and the professor arrived at your original formulation.) Then I can bring it up to date. ===== How Do You Say "Vulcan" in Vulcan? (S. Epstein: Complete) That depends on what you're referring to when you say "Vulcan." The general word for "Vulcanness" or "Vulcan person" is , though when referring to a Vulcan person, it's more respectful to say . (More than ten Vulcans is .) A prefix, - is derived from , and is used to indicate that something is "of Vulcan(s)." So is "Vulcan language." , originally meaning "union of Vulcans," is applied to the home planet itself, but also to the set containing that planet and all other planets colonized by Vulcans before the advent of the Federation's Joint Settlement Policy. ===== What Do all the Brackets Mean? ===== What about this Other Dictionary? (R. Zook: in Production) ===== How Do I Join? (R. Raemon: Complete) ..,VALD and the List VALD functions primarily through Internet mail correspondance, and especially through the vulcan-linguistics mailing list. To subscribe to vulcan-linguistics, send an e-mail message to the person at vulcan-l-request*shikahr,com,inter,net saying that you want to join the linguistics list. Current policy requires that you also be a subscriber to either the more general vulcan-l list or its digest (vulcan-l-digest), so that there is a forum for discussing those topics which are not linguistics-related (e,g. mechanics of weather) but which can influence the language (e,g. words for storms and for kinds of storms). In your message to vulcan-l-request, mention which of these (vulcan-l or vulcan-l-digest) you prefer, and a subscription to it will be set up at the same time. The Site Policies FAQ posted to vulcan-l also applies to vulcan-linguistics. That FAQ is posted every two weeks, on the 1st and 15th of each month. ===== Where Do I Find VALD's Work? (Epstein/Raemon: Complete) The are two archives for the vulcan-linguistics list. The primary archive is available by FTP at dmz,shikahr,com,inter,net/pub/linguistics There is no README file to explain the directory setup, so here are the details. There are two subdirectories, one called "zip" and one called "uuencoded". The zip directory contains messages that are grouped together and compressed with the Unix-based Info-ZIP package. But these files have been found to completely freeze some PC-based TCP/IP stacks when a download is attempted. Rather than force someone to have to get a new TCP/IP stack, each *,zip file has in turn been encoded in an ASCII text file, using the Unix standard uuencode program. These encoded files are in the "uuencoded" directory. Each file is given a name that indicates which postings are included in that archive. The postings are individual files, each given a number. The name of the archive file gives the first posting article number that is present in that archive. Archives have 50 or 100 articles. The secondary archive is available by HTTP at www,jccc,net/~sepstein/vald/list This archive is not compressed, and each message is represented by a link (labelled with the speaker, subject, and date) to an individual page. Currently, the archive is divided between messages from 1997 and messages from 1998. In the future, this archive will include searching features as well. As particular examinations of aspects of Vulcan language approach the status of definitive statements, they will be made available on the Web. Currently there are two good places to look for such things: The Vulcan Information Centre www,ludwig,ucl,ac,uk/st/StarTrek/Vulcan/Vulcan,html A Prahlakhute Ngokh Web Booklet www,jccc,net/~sepstein/vald ===== (NOTE: Though some of it will deal with VALD irrespective of specific dialects, this seems of necessity to be a ZC-oriented FAQ, for now. Once VLI makes Classical Vulcan available, that can change.) -- from Saul Epstein locus*planetkc,com - www,planetkc,com/locus "Surakri' ow'phahcur the's'hi the's'cha'; the's'phahrka the's'hi surakecha'." -- K'dvarin Urswhl'at