LINGUIST List 2.783

Tue 12 Nov 1991

Misc: Klingon and other Frivolities

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Allan C. Wechsler, Klingon and other fictional languages
2. , Stallone's OSCAR and linguist Dr. Poole

The Klingon language as described by Marc Okrand is certainly a superior
effort, unrivaled in my opinion since Tolkien.
Most fictional languages founder on the linguistic ignorance of their
designers, and wind up being transparent "codes" where made-up words are
substituted for English ones. Language designers (in general) seem to
confine their creative efforts to the lexicon, ignoring the other
interesting levels of phonetics, phonology, and morphology "beneath" the
lexicon; and simultaneously ignoring syntax, prosody, and discourse
phenomena "above" it.
A small group of writers, apparently realizing their limitations, simply
"write in tongues" to produce utterances in their fictional languages,
without any attempt to invent a real language. I think this is what C.
J. Cherryh does, but she is clever enough to salt her alien utterances
with proper names, distorted as if by loan-phonology, and decorated with
inflectional affixes.
(Most writers are disappointingly unspecific about orthography, so it's
not always possible to determine what the phonetic intent was, if any.
Certain letters have emotional content, and the author's artistic intent
might interfere with linguistic integrity. For example, if I wanted to
write an invented word, say, /ikte:8/ (where the 8 is a theta), I might
choose to write "ictaithe" because I thought it looked snazzier than
"iktee8" or whatever.)
Tolkien is almost free of these flaws. His languages are clearly the
work of a trained linguist, albeit one raised in the old philological
tradition. His phonetic intent is transparent. His languages (Quenya,
Sindarin, Khazad, and the "Black Speech") feel natural and unforced,
with attention paid to all linguistic levels. Furthermore, Quenya and
Sindarin are definitely European languages -- not from any actual
phylum, but with an ineluctable European "feel".
(The "Black Speech" "feels" like Turkish, and Khazad like Hebrew.)
Okrand, on the other hand, aims at an alien impression. Klingon is a
less polished work than, say, Sindarin, but it has "modern structural
linguist" written all over it. One of Okrand's "in-jokes" is that
Klingon is OVS, and the order is nearly obligatory since there is no
syntactic case-marking.
The phonetic descriptions are humorous, advocating a good deal of
spitting and snarling.
The phonology is less satisfying. There seem to be no live phonological
processes in Klingon, although a couple of the segments have some free
allophony. It's hard to generate a convincing feature analysis of the
consonant repertoire without resorting to some rather unnatural
execution rules. The syllable structure is CV(C), with almost all
possible combinations occurring. There are a few exceptional syllables;
for example, -rG (where G is gamma) is a permissible coda, and -y? and
-w? have limited distribution -- the constraints are unclear.
Presumably Okrand would make up answers if we asked him.
The morphology is an exuberant Amerind-style template machine, with five
classes of suffixes for nouns and nine for verbs. Except for one
possible unattested loop (there are both NV formatives and VN
formatives, and it's possible that one could use both in one word) the
morphology is not agglutinative in the strict sense. It's a little
disappointing that there is no morphonological interaction between the
affixes.
All of the affixes are single well-formed syllables, but the pronominal
verb prefixes are confined to CV, that is, C2=0. The vast majority of
noun and verb roots are monosyllabic, with a small number of
disyllables. Most of the disyllables have transparent etymologies as
compounds, but in one of the most naturalistic touches in the whole
work, Okrand includes a handful of disyllabic roots for which one or
both components resist analysis. I quote one paragraph to give you the
flavor:
"For example, /?ed3 do?/ [my transcription (3 = zh) -- see below] means
`starship'. The syllable /?ed3/ also occurs in /?ed3 yo?/ `Starfleet'.
There are, however, no known Klingon words /?ed3/, /do?/, or /yo?/ that
have anything to do with Starfleet, starships, the Federation, or space
vehicles of any kind. It is quite likely that /do?/ is an Old Klingon
word for `space vessel' (the modern Klingon word is /dud3/) that is used
nowhere except in the noun /?ed3 do?/. Of course, without further
study, that remains pure conjecture."
I have a pet peeve with Okrand, which is that his orthography is
needlessly cumbersome. He describes it completely and adequately, but
the actual design is silly. For example, he insists on capital <I>
instead of lowercase <i> to remind us that the vowel is lax, even though
tense [i] does not occur in Klingon. Perhaps Okrand intended the IPA
small capital I, but the printers couldn't or wouldn't set it except in
full size. And in the amusing "phrase-book", Klingon words are printed
in a sans-serif font in which <I> and <l> are indistinguishable.
Similarly, Okrand insists on <D> instead of <d>, apparently to remind us
that the stop is retroflexed, although as before, dental [d] does not
occur. Okrand uses the distracting trigraph <tlh> for a lateral-release
coronal affricate. Why not <tl> or even <L>? And so on.
All in all, however, I'm pleasantly surprised that the Star Trek folks
were willing to invest the energy to do this so carefully.
Does anyone know the true story behind the alien language that gets
subtitled in the barroom scene of the first "Star Wars" movie? Was
there any design or is it just gibberish?

I'm sure that this won't be news to many of the North-American readers of
this group (and my apologies for that) but there you have it anyways.
OSCAR, a recent (?) Sylvester Stallone movie which I enjoyed considerably,
has a wonderful screen character, Dr. Thorton Poole, who is, we learn, a
professional linguist. And I think he steals the show with his
extraordinary (and mind you quite deep) linguistic insults to the people
around Stallone. He also teaches Stallone "public speaking," etc.
Stallone plays an underworld boss and the time is, I think, right after the
Crash of '29.
Unfortunately, Dr. Poole enters the story only at the second half of the
movie but this guy is really amazing.
If you haven't seen the movie, consider checking it out from your favorite
video rental.
With all good wishes,
Varol Akman
Bilkent University, Ankara