tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Aug 16 18:49:28 1996

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Re: result of verb?


T::>At 01:18 PM 8/14/96 -0700, Craig Altenburg wrote:
 ::>>At 3:54 PM -0400 8/14/96, JEFF ZEITLIN wrote:
 ::>>>  As a sort of exercise, I'm attempting to translate some random
 ::>>>  sections of random documents, and I have run into a problem
 ::>>>  _again_.  Quite likely it's due to the fact that matlh has not
 ::>>>  given us a _complete_ tlhIngan Hol grammar and vocabulary, but
 ::>>>  it's still annoying.
 ::>>>
 ::>>>  What I need is some way of indicating the product/result of a
 ::>>>  verb - for example "evaluate (v)" -> "evaluation (n)".  Using
 ::>>>  the -wI' suffix is clearly not correct; that would give me
 ::>>>  "evaluator (n)".
 ::>>>
 ::>>>  The context is approximately "I have examined the information
 ::>>>  you have provided; my evaluation is that...".
 ::>>
 ::>>How about:  ..... 'e' vIchov.
 ::>>


T::>*whistles and applauds*

T::>I was going to comment that Englishuses "to be" a LOT (I wasn't the first
 ::>person to observe this. :) ).  Consequently, if you are translating
 ::>something to tlhInga, and you find yourself struggling to nominalize a verb
 ::>to use it with some form of "to be", you would do better to re-cast your
 ::>sentence so the verb is used as a VERB.

 In general, I _do_ try to do this.  On occasion, I have ended
 up with some constructions that were so twisted that I
 discarded them, thinking that they _had_ to be wrong.  If I
 find any of them, I'll post them to the list for comment.

T::>Incidentally, the verb suffix you are looking for is -ghach, although using
 ::>it on a verb with no other suffixes is a "marked" form.  In other words, it
 ::>is going to sound very weird, even though it is grammatically correct.

 ***Thank you!  _That's_ the suffix that I was looking for, and
 it turned out to be in the addendum to TKD.  I think we need a
 new edition, where the material in the addendum has been merged
 into the main body, along with any new information that Marc
 gets from matlh.

 What this means is that the title of the first chapter of Sun
 Tzu ("Estimates") quite nicely translates as <chovghachmey>.
 Or should it be <chovghach'e'mey>?  Either one is much better
 than <vuDmey>. Even if it _is_ "marked" usage.

T::>I would also use Qeygh's suggestion of  ... 'e' vIchov, rather than
 ::>perverting it to some form of ... 'oH chovghachwIj'e' (it's shorter, too. :) )

 For the full sentence context, yes.  Perhaps that was a bad
 example, given what I was actually doing; I used that simply to
 illustrate the meaning I was after.

==========================================================================
Jeff Zeitlin                                      [email protected]
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