Re: VL - multiple words
Saul Epstein 
Tue, 28 Oct 1997 13:06:43 -0600

At 10:27 AM 10/28/97 M, Pat wrote:

>I have a question re:  multiple words for the same meaning.  I accessed the 
>Universal Translator and found the following examples:
>     challenge = kali-fee; kunat kali-fee; toriatal.  Does toriatal mean a 
>specific kind of challenge?

"toriatal" (besides sounding remarkably similar to the name of a CNN anchor)
means a challenge to the death and is labelled in the ZC lexicon as "Old
Vulcan" which explains why it bears no apparent similarity to "kali-fee,"
which is said to mean literally "body-attack." "Kunat kali-fee" is
translated as either "mating" or "challenge," but since "kunat" is "mating,"
I suspect "kunat kali-fee" is specifically a woman's rejection of her
bond-mate at pon farr.

>     emotion = arie; porsen
>     from = cha; me
>     prosper = ur-seveh; tesmur
>I was wondering if a more complete definition of the above examples would 
>help me and others if we want to formulate intelligent sentences.

That's almost certainly correct. I can only help with one, I think. "-cha"
is the ablative suffix -- that is, the suffix an object takes when it acts
as the origin of a sentence's action or the origin of a sentence's subject.
At a guess, I would say that "me" acts more like English's "from"
preposition. So to say in Vulcan "I walked from Shikahr," one could say

        th'- imro(pe)i cikaar -tca

or

        th'imropei me cikaartca

unless "me" is actually a POSTposition (instead of a PREposition) in which
case one could say

        th'imropei cikaartca me

This may seem redundant, but back when English still inflected nouns, this
was not atypical. Prepositions are used even in inflecting languages to make
fine distinctions. "From," for instance, implies that the origin is an
object or a place in space, while "since" implies that the origin is a
moment in time. But both would take the ablative.

>Also, we do need a Vulcan word for 
>Peace.  Any thoughts?

Well, we have "arivne," (possibly from "arie-vne") meaning "a state of unity
between matter, energy, and thought;" and "lailara," meaning "harmony."
Peace can mean other things, of course, but it is often used to mean just
those sorts of things.

--
from Saul Epstein
liberty <at> uit <dot> net
www <dot> johnco <dot> cc <dot> ks <dot> us <slash> <tilde> sepstein
"Surak ow'phaaper thes'hi thes'tca'; thes'phaadjar thes'hi suraketca'."
					-- K'dvarin Urswhl'at