Part 2 Re: Whatever happened to vulcan-linguistics + question
Saul Epstein 
Tue, 26 Jan 1999 10:51:39 -0600

(Quotes Rob Zook: Monday, January 25, 1999 7:13 PM)


>Martina Luise Pachali wrote:
>
>> I was explaining about Vulcan spirituality to an outsider, giving
him the
>> full lecture about katras and the Hall of Ancient Thought and the
>> knowledge of The Other, and during this discussion there cropped up
the
>> question whether there is a verb in any of the Vulcan languages
(ancient
>> or otherwise) to describe a perception during mind meld or deep
>> meditation. My idea was that there would be a simple verb,
analogous to
>> "hear", "see", "taste", "smell" or "feel", which would denote a
such a
>> perception. In a way, Vulcans do have one more sense than humans
do, and
>> as there are verbs for all the other senses, there would also be
one to
>> denote sensory input from the world outside through that particular
gate
>> of perception. Is there, and if so, what is it?
>
>We're still hashing this part out, but my take is that MV words
represent
>pretty abstract concepts for the most part, and you have to realize
the
>meaning of the word with additional particles and the context of the
>utterance. Even words like le'matya (which in English would get
classed
>as simple nouns), concern a class of phenomina rather than one
specific
>feline preditor.

Right. The idea as I've been able to understand it is that the lexicon
consists of numerous roots which, in the absence of any context, are
not necessarily any specific part of speech. In addition, there does
not seem to be quite so fixed a line between entities (similar to
nouns) and action-states (similar to verbs or predicate adjectives) as
is found in English and many other Terran languages.

>So I proposed a set of particles on could add to entity and
action-state
>words in order to make them more concrete and applicable to a
specific
>situation when one wants to use them that way. I called these sets
words
>abstractors and instatiators.
>
>Abstractors would define what kind of abstraction you where dealing
with
>and consists of the sub-classes of Evidentials, Sensations, and
Mentations.
     [...]
>All the Vulcans we've seen (except for Sybok) generally speak in a
precise
>and scientific manner. So in line with that conception of Vulcan
speech,
>rather than say, "I saw a le'matya" which has all sorts of
unfortunate
>epistemological baggage, I think a Vulcan would say <th'kircha
>th'le'matyagifa>, and probably just <th'le'matyagifa> if speaking in
>an immediate sense. Literally it would mean "I report my visually
>remembered le'matya-like phenomina" or the simpler utterance just "my
>visually remembered le'matya-like phenomina".

I have some mild objections to this. ( Surprise! ;-) )The precise
meaning we're trying to get across is roughly this, correct? "At some
point in the past, my eyes apparently received radiation in a pattern
which my brain interpreted as representing reflection (or emission)
from an entity having characteristics of a member of the class
{Le'matya}."

Now, the idea of sight, taken literally, is just the cognition of
light absorbed by the eyes. If we restrict its use to such a literal
sense, and never use sight to mean understanding or imagination or
anything else, I see no reason why a very precise-speaking Vulcan
couldn't say, "I saw X:a {Le'matya}-member."

>So, if a vulcan did a mind-meld with someone who had seen a le'matya
>and he was describing his perceptions during the meld he could say
><th'kircha th'chole'matyagiku>, "I report my indirectly, visually
>experienced le'matya-like phenomina".
>
>I don't think that Vulcans consider telepathy a "sixth sense", but
that
>sensory information recieved telepathically would seem like sense
memories
>but one's you know your senses did not report.

This depends somewhat on how we conceive the nature of telepathic
communication. If it is only the direct sharing of one mind's
perception with another mind, it might make sense not to classify it
as a mode of perception in its own right. But there is also the matter
of direct sharing of one mind's thoughts with another mind. There are
thoughts that are not sensory in terms of the five typically thought
of, but only cognitive. If these are also shared the obvious analogy
is to speech, which is heard.

It makes sense to me that Vulcan would have a "verb" for the
telepathic "speaking" of a thought, and also for the telepathic
"hearing." In addition (or instead) there could be one "verb" derived
from a phrase like "to share thought" used when people communicating
telepathically have become so much of one mind that it is difficult to
assign "ownership" of thoughts to one of them.

--
from Saul Epstein
locus*planetkc,com - www,planetkc,com/locus
"Surakri' ow'phatsur the's'hi the's'tca'; the's'pharka
    the's'hi suraketca'."
                                        -- K'dvarin Urswhl'at