tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 02 13:47:36 1995
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Re: }} -mo' and N1's N2
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: }} -mo' and N1's N2
- Date: Wed, 2 Aug 1995 13:47:36 -0400
>Date: Tue, 1 Aug 1995 23:27:44 -0500
>From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
>yoDtargh wrote:
>>The way I think of it, is that the last noun is the main noun and
>>the noun which preceeds describes that noun in some way.
>I challenged his use of the word "describes" which I felt implies an
>adjectival use of the noun. I pointed out that TKD (see sections 3.3.4 and
>3.4) calls N-N "the Klingon possessive construction for a noun possessed by
>another noun."
>~mark defended yoDtargh with an argument for a looser interpretation of N-N.
>~mark writes:
>>It's more than my opinion, though. We have canon:
>>
>>"peQ chem" is "magnetic field". "peQ" is magnetism and "chem" appears to
>>be field. Magnetism doesn't *own* the field (how can it own anything?),
>>but rather the field is modified by magnetism, it's somehow associated with
>>it.
>Well, "magnetism's field" certainly sounds right to me. It's the field
>which belongs to magnetism. I don't see a need to dilute the
>"possessor-possessed" rule for this one.
I suppose it depends on how you feel about ownership...
>> "HoS lIngwI'" ... "Hergh QaywI'" ... "tuj muvwI'" ... "woj choHwI'" ...
>>
>>So I think that there is plenty of evidence for a broader interpretation of
>>N-N constructions.
>I see a pattern here. I agree that these examples stretch the concept of
>possession pretty far if you take them as simple noun-noun phrases, but
>I've got a counter-argument. Notice that each of them is of the form
>noun-verb-wI'. Instead of relaxing the possession concept in general, we
>analyze the N-VwI' slightly differently. Instead of translating {HoS
>lIngwI'} word-by-word to get "energy generator" or "generator of energy",
>we start with the sentence {HoS lIng} "it generates energy" and put the
>{-wI'} on the verb to get a descriptive phrase "thing which generates
>energy". All other type 9 verb suffixes work on entire sentences this way;
>why shouldn't {-wI'}?
>I'm very proud of this argument, but I'm willing to listen to criticism.
You should be proud, it's a good argument. At least I like it. I'm not
about to give up on a broad interpretation of N-N's, because I think we can
probably find more canon for it. But your argument is certainly a good
point and food for thought.
~mark