tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Aug 11 22:49:28 1995
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Re: }} {-wI'} on sentences
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: }} {-wI'} on sentences
- Date: Fri, 11 Aug 1995 21:49:28 -0500
I wrote:
> ...(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".
charghwI' writes:
>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.
You falsely accuse me, sir. I am not "making up" a rule. I learned in 4th
grade this feature of the "ACTOR" transformation in English grammar. My
specific example of "meat eater" comes from a discussion my class had when
we were discussing adjectives, and our teacher told us that "meat" is NOT
an adjective in that phrase.
> 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.
As it happens, "slow eater" was an example given in the aforementioned
discussion of a phrase which DOES have an adjective in front of "eater".
But I see a clear distinction between "an eater who is slow" and "an eater
of meat". The first case has a descriptive word applied to the noun
"eater", while the second has an object on the verb "eat".
>> 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.
The interpretation that I learned in grammar school :-) is that the pair of
words "meat eater" is a noun clause (I'm not sure of the term anymore)
derived from the phrase "eats meat". I remember this specific example
distinctly. The way it was written on the blackboard was approximately:
EATS MEAT ------> MEAT EATER
T-ACTOR
I haven't seen transformational grammar mentioned in school since I started
Junior High school, so I don't know if this is the current way to describe
it.
>> ...in English you need to put the object first because of the "-er".
>
>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.
>From your point of view, I appear to be making up rules to justify my
position? Interesting. From my point of view you have just extended your
attack on my interpretation of Klingon to attack also my knowledge of
English grammar.
>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?
If "ham" were a verb from which "hammer" were derived, then I indeed would
interpret "meat hammer" as a "thing which hams meat". However, hammer is a
simple noun (from Old English "hamor") which just happens to end in "-er".
I have no problem with such a pairing of two simple nouns. Replace
"hammer" with "club" to remove the incidental "-er" and "meat club" fits my
interpretation of genitive. "Meat hammerer", on the other hand, DOES mean
to me "thing which hammers meat".
>Meat sauce. // A sauce made of meat. Fine in English, but it does
// not fit my understanding of noun-noun in Klingon.
>Meat hammer. // The hammer is defined by its use with meat. Fine.
>Meat cleaver. // A thing which cleaves meat. I don't hear the
// word "cleaver" used by itself as a simple noun.
>Meat knife. // The knife is defined by its use with meat. Fine.
>Meat offering.// (Uh, oh. I'll get to this one later.)
>Meat wagon. // I'll pass on this one; it's a colloquialism.
>Meat tea. [for those Britts among us]
// Since "tea" here is a meal rather than a drink,
// and "meat" defines which meal is being discussed,
// I think this is a genitive noun-noun construction.
>Meat store. // The store is defined by its selling meat. Fine.
>Meat salesman.// Because of the word "salesman" this is borderline.
// In Klingon, this would be {HaDI'baH ngevwI'},
// "meat seller", which I don't see as a "genitive".
>Meat eater. // One who eats meat. I don't think it fits noun-noun.
>> 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.
There's nothing mysterious about the ACTOR transformation; it simply seems
that you either have never heard of it or you have forgotten it.
>Instead, energy is related to "changer" as it is to other nouns
>which follow it:
I'm afraid I'm about to dig myself in deeper here, but I would be
abandoning my principles if I just ignored how I feel about these. I've
rearranged the examples to put similar constructions together.
>Energy policy...Energy field...Energy conduit...
>Energy department...Energy bill
These all fit my interpretation of noun-noun (with the disclaimer that
"conduit" is probably {qengwI'} in Klingon, not a simple noun).
>Energy monitor...Energy changer
These are the N-V-wI' examples which trouble me so.
>Energy storage...Energy consumption...Energy accumulation
I have to say it. I don't really relish the response I'm going to get, but
I have to say it. These fit the pattern N-V-ghach. If I propose that
{-wI'} works on a verb with an object, the same arguments apply to
{-ghach}. This is the category in which I would place "meat offering".
>Bill changer.
>Sorry. That just kinda happened.
No problem. After my sincere but horrifying suggestion that {-ghach} might
be permitted to act on a verb with an object, I think we need some comic
relief.
>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?
It's a "nominalizer". It doesn't "mark" a subordinate clause, it "creates"
a noun clause, or as TKD calls it, a "compound noun". "noun-noun" is the
only kind of compound noun defined by TKD, but I find that definition
deficient when it comes to {woj choHwI'} etc.
>toH. bIQuch'a'? You went and made me RTFM.
Hey, quoting chapter and verse is de rigeur in a religious war, which this
debate apparently has become.
>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?
"Just a flesh wound."
I have argued myself into a very dark corner where I am faced with a
multitude of ravenous beasts bearing the name {-ghach}. This has
substantially weakened my resolve. charghwI', I thank you. You have
forced me to explore the logical limits of my proposal, and I've reached a
conclusion that is "anathema to the concept of a Klingon sentence." Your
tolerance for novel constructions is obviously much lower than mine; I had
to pursue the implications much farther before I ran into sufficiently
uncomfortable conclusions. I must now either accept that {woj choHwI'} is
indeed a noun-noun construction, or permit both {-wI'} AND {-ghach} to act
on verbs with objects.
I choose now to reject objects on a verb with {-ghach}. By association, I
must reject objects on a verb with {-wI'). I must expand my interpretation
of the noun-noun construction to encompass "energy changer" etc.
charghwI', maybe I should get you a T-shirt that says:
chargh
I won the vs -wI' debate of 1995!
ghunchu'
I at least owe you a box of chocolate-covered tribbles.
-- ghunchu'wI'