tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Aug 11 09:17:29 1995

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Re: }} {-wI'} on sentences

charghwI' writes:
>As I remember it, we did not conclude that {nav paq} did not
>suit the noun-noun construction. Instead, we concluded that it
>was sufficiently vague in meaning that it did not serve the
>original author's intent.

Somewhere along the way, we discussed how the phrase "book of paper" was
not necessarily appropriate in Klingon for "book which is made of paper"
either.  This is an example of an English "N2 of N1" which is not Klingon
{N1 N2}.

>> I do not see how medicine can "own" a transferrer in any way.
>
>I vote for territorial residence or occupation, e.g. a
>criminal's hideout. The medicine resides in the transferer. It
>is the medicine's transferer.

(Oh, good!  I can accept this!)  I'm still not completely satisfied, but I
have no good way to counter this argument.  (My entire proposal is so weak
that it only takes a weak argument to counter it.)

>... Since you have no
>canon justification for beginning with a verb with an object
>and then adding {-wI'} to that clause, you instead must be
>taking a noun consisting of a verb with {-wI'} and claiming
>that by some mysterious grammar, since the word once was a verb
>before it became a noun, the object that could have been
>associated with the verb can now be associated with the noun.

It's true that I have no canon justification for putting {-wI'} on
sentences, since TKD says that it goes on verbs.  However, I also have no
canon justification for accepting noun-noun as anything other than
"possessive", since that's what TKD calls it.  I can either accept {woj
choHwI'} as noun-noun on "faith" or I can try to explain it differently.
It's much more fun to take the minority (!) position.

>Verbs with {-meH} are referred to as "Purpose CLAUSES". Verbs
>with {-bogh} are referred to as "Relative CLAUSES". Verbs with
>{-wI'} are referred to as "nouns". Clauses can have objects.
>Nouns cannot.

In English, a clause may itself be a noun, e.g. "meat eater", one who eats
meat.  "Eat" here has the object "meat"  I'm trying to justify a similar
derivation in Klingon for the {N V-wI'} examples we have.  (It's a feature
of the language that when one places "-er" on a phrase like "eat meat", the
object moves to the front of the verb to get out of the way of the "-er".
It's probably an accident that it matches the word order for genitive or
adjective, or maybe the English adjective form is derived from the "noun
clause" form.)

>[thing which changes energy -> changer energy]
>...I just replaced the relative CLAUSE with its
>equivalent noun, just like you did.

Except in English you need to put the object first because of the "-er".
The result is the perfectly reasonable "energy changer".  NOT "energy's
changer", which the conventional translation from Klingon would have it.

I think we've each gone as far as we can.  You have the entire force of
convention and TKD itself behind you; I have a tiny nag about "energy
changer" not perfectly fitting TKD's definition of noun-noun.  In the
interest of communication, I must of course comply with convention, but I
still am unsure about the true nature of the Klingon "noun-noun"
construction.

 -- ghunchu'wI'

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