tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Apr 27 20:59:43 1995
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Re: bIjatlh 'e' yImev
On Thu, 27 Apr 1995 17:08:25 -0400, [email protected] said:
> Why must we contort our brains into such constructions as
> <machHa'ghach> when there is already precedence for <tIntaHghach>?
> <-taH> is used several times in the <-ghach> construction examples.
There is a good reason for {tIntaHghach} to be ill-formed: {-taH} is a
durative aspect marker, which is unlikely to cooccur with a stative verb.
You don't say _zai4 da4_ or _da4zhe_ in Mandarin, do you?
> Furthermore, <machHa'> seems to come across as the "undoing of being
> little." Even <machbe'ghach>, whether better or worse, seems to
> come across as "[the] not being small."
It seems to come across as `unsmallness', which is clearly a wretched
way to say `bigness' (assuming that one really needs to say it).
> In that Noun 1 possesses Noun 2, the adjective-noun 2 no longer
> only states [...] the attributes of Noun 1 but also is the possessed
> noun. Thus, <puq mach> does mean "little child." More literally,
> it means "the little[ness] of the child."
That won't do. {mach} is not a noun; it doesn't take the 5 types of
nominal suffixes, nor can it be the subject or object of a sentence.
Instead, it takes prefixes and the 9 types of verbal suffixes and can
have a full noun phrase as its subject. It meets all the criteria for
verbhood and none of the ones for nounhood. Calling it a noun creates
considerably more problems than it solves.
--'Iwvan