tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Aug 11 13:05:43 1995
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Re: }} {-wI'} on sentences
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: }} {-wI'} on sentences
- Date: Fri, 11 Aug 1995 13:05:43 -0400 (EDT)
According to Alan Anderson:
>
> charghwI' writes:
...
> >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"
Using the logic that you used, the term should be "eater meat",
since the verb "eat" would have the object "meat" follow it.
The reason the word order is as it is in English is that "meat"
is acting as an adjective of the noun "eater", much as the word
"steak" does in the term "steak knife". The word "knife" never
was a verb, yet its relationship to "steak" is exactly the same
as the relationship between "meat" and "eater". Which type of
eater is it? It is a meat eater. It has nothing to do with the
relationship between "meat" as an object and "eat" as a verb.
You are making exactly the same error in English that you made
in Klingon, except that the word order accidentally looks right
in Klingon and it clearly looks wrong in English.
> 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".
This is completely fiction. You are looking at this pair of
words in a completely confused manner and making up a rule that
you reverse the "normal" word order when you add "-er" to the
verb. In truth, when you add "-er" to the verb, you convert it
to a noun. After it is a noun, you then modify the noun with a
word that describes which kind of this noun you mean. You could
easily speak of a "macrobiotic eater", but that doesn't mean
the person eats macrobiotics. If a person is a "slow eater",
does that mean they eat slows? I could see someone refer to
themselves as a "campfire eater", describing that they prefer
to eat food cooked in a camp fire, or a "gourmet eater"
indicating that their tastes in food reflect their sense of
class.
> 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.)
There is no noun clause here. There is a noun with a modifier
which happens to be another noun. I believe that the most
common interpretation would be that the first noun is genitive.
> >[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".
You are starting to sound like a flat earther. It reminds me of
the scene in "Soap" when the husband is sitting in a bathtub,
telling his wife that he is invisible. She patiently assures
him that she can see him, right there in front of her, sitting
in the tub. He paused, then looked down and said, "Why, of
COURSE you can see me. I'm not invisible when I'm in WATER!"
You are so sure that your weak premise is right that you will
go to all bizarre logical lengths to explain it whenever it
shows evidence of being clearly wrong. So English reverses the
word order between a verb and its object whenever you put "-er"
on the verb. Very interesting. I've never heard that before
from anybody else. I can see how you can be tempted to make
that up in order to explain things from your starting point,
but your starting point is simply wrong.
You don't say, "eat meat", then add "-er" to "eat" and then
reverse the words. You just say, "eat", then add "-er" to be a
noun and then you take the word "meat" and associate it with
that noun. A "meat tenderizing hammer" is also called a "meat
hammer". Does that mean that "ham" is a verb and the root of
this was some sentence about hamming meat?
Meat sauce.
Meat hammer.
Meat cleaver.
Meat knife.
Meat offering.
Meat wagon.
Meat tea. [for those Britts among us]
Meat store.
Meat salesman.
Meat eater.
Get it?
> The result is the perfectly reasonable "energy changer". NOT "energy's
> changer", which the conventional translation from Klingon would have it.
Well, in English the word order WOULD be "energy changer", not
because we started with the verb "change" and went to the
clause "change energy" and mysteriously reversed the word order
when we added "er" in order to create your mysterious noun
clause.
Instead, energy is related to "changer" as it is to other nouns
which follow it:
Energy storage.
Energy consumption.
Energy policy.
Energy accumulation.
Energy monitor.
Energy field.
Energy conduit.
Energy department.
Energy bill.
Energy changer.
Bill changer.
Sorry. That just kinda happened.
> 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'
Type 9 suffixes:
-DI' forms a dependent clause whose role in a sentence is to
act as a time context for the action of the main verb. The
canon example shows it used with a prefix, illustrating it as a
clause and not just referring to the action of the verb without
a subject and an optional object.
-chugh forms a dependent clause whose role is to set up a
conditional situation triggering the action of the main verb.
It also acts as a sort of time context for the main verb. The
canon example shows it with a prefix again indicating a subject
and an object.
-pa' forms a dependent clause whose role is to offer a time
context for the main verb. Again, canon shows it used with a
prefix indicating a subject and an object.
-vIS forms a dependent clause whose role is to offer a time
context to the main verb. Canon shows it used with prefixes
indicating subjects of other than 3rd person, though it does
not show its use with an object.
-bogh is a relative clause marker. See section 6.2.4.
-'a' marks the entire sentence as interrogative; a question
which can be answered by "yes" or "no".
-wI' "turns verbs into nouns". We are referred to 3.2.2, which
refers only to bare verbs converted into nouns and then these
nouns are treated as regular nouns. There is no mention of the
word "clause" and no example suggesting one. There is no use of
a prefix on the verb. We are actually stretching things a bit
to presume that we can even use other verb suffixes before the
{-wI'}, but Okrand provides us with no specific reason to ban
this. To presume, despite Okrand's repeated reference to the
thing converted to a noun as a "verb" and never a "clause" that
this can be used on a clause is extraordinary, considering that
he did describe the other Type 9 suffixes in reference to the
term "clause", either specifically (like {-meH} and {-bogh}) or
in section 6.2.2 where he specifically excepts {-wI'} from the
list of Type 9 suffixes that could be described as subordinate
clauses.
Let's look at this again. No sense losing it in a long
paragraph.
In 6.2.2, describing subordinate clauses, Okrand says, "Klingon
verbs ending in Type 9 suffixes (other than {-'a'}
INTERROGATIVE and {-wI'} ONE WHO DOES, ONE WHICH DOES) always
occur in sentences with another verb. Hence, they are verbs in
subordinate clauses." This rather specifically rejects {-wI'}
as a subordinate clause marker, and if {-wI'} is not a
subordinate clause marker, just exactly what kind of clause do
you suggest that it marks?
toH. bIQuch'a'? You went and made me RTFM.
Will you PLEASE admit that this deals a death blow to your
argument? I feel like the knight at the bridge when the other
knight with no arms and no legs is spewing blood and screaming,
"Come back here, you coward! I'll bite your legs off!" The
fight is over. Just lay down and die, okay?
"'e's dead!"
"No I'm not."
"Yes, he is."
"I am NOT."
"Well, 'e's ALMOST dead."
"I'm feeling better already!"
Will somebody pass me a hammer?
charghwI'
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