tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Apr 30 15:43:12 1995
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Re: bIjatlh 'e' yImev
- From: Alan Anderson <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: bIjatlh 'e' yImev
- Date: Sun, 30 Apr 95 17:42:09 EST
peHruS writes:
> [...] Klingon DOES have adjectives, TKD pp.49-50, S 4.4.
TKD 4.4 says "There are no adjectives as such in Klingon." So there.
> Contrary to pure adjectival use as in English [...], the Klingon grammarians'
> concept of adjectives seems to the Terran to be noun-noun constructions.
No way. The "adjectival" use of a stative verb does NOT use the verb as a
noun. In {naDev qaS wanI' ramqu'} (found in TKD's appendix), {ramqu'} uses
{-qu'} as a verb suffix, and means "be emphatically unimportant". It does
not use a noun suffix and does not mean "unimportances."
> In that Noun 1 possesses Noun 2, the adjective-noun 2 no longer only states
> (stative verb = adjective, viz Chinese, etc.) the attributes of Noun 1 but
> also is the possessed noun. Thus, <puq mach> does mean "little child."
Well, it's normally TRANSLATED as "little child". I view it as a shortcut for
{machbogh puq}, and I sometimes translate it as "child which-is-little".
> More literally, it means "the little[ness] of the child."
NO! The important idea in {puq mach} "little child" is the CHILD. You can
remove the {mach} and still leave the essential meaning. A Noun/Stative-Verb
pair works like that. However, the important idea in {nuH pegh} "weapon's
secret" is not the weapon, but the SECRET. You can't remove the {pegh} without
losing that. That's how a Noun/Noun pair works. If {puq mach} indeed meant
"the child's littleness" then you would be talking about a size, not a person.
> Now, <puq latlh> is "the additionality of a child," ergo "an additional
> child."
I don't see these as the same thing at all. First, {latlh} does not mean
"additionality" -- whatever that is. Second, if it did, your claim would
make {puq latlh} refer to the attribute of being additional, and not to
whatever the additional thing is.
> Although the Klingon grammarians claim that this is a Noun 1-Noun 2
> construct, Terrans will do well to look upon the second noun (???) as
> an adjective while learning the nuances of "feeling" the Klingon language.
You're very confused, sir. One can hope that your confusion is not contagious.
The concepts which you are proposing are contradicted by the very sections of
TKD which you cite.
-- ghunchu'wI'