tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Oct 24 13:30:53 1998
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Re: drillmusciangroup
ja' K'ryntes:
>You know that thread where the writer said, "If we can mash two nouns
>together,
>why not three?" Or something to that effect. Well, I just started to
>read my
>TKD another time this morning and on page 19 it says a compound noun can
>consist
>of two or three nouns. So apparently it is okay to do that with Klingon,
>right?
lughlaw'qu'. lughbejbe'.
Klingon has compound nouns consisting of two or three nouns in a row. We
find them in the dictionary; they are "official" words. However, we don't
quite have a good procedure for making them ourselves. The closest we get
is in section 3.4 "The noun-noun construction" where we are told:
...it is possible to combine nouns in the manner of a compound
noun to produce a new construct even if it is not a legitimate
compound noun ("legitimate" in the sense that it would be found
in a dictionary).
The rules for interpreting such a compound say that N1-N2 means "N1's N2"
or equivalently "N2 of the N1", calling this usage the Klingon possessive
construction. Those rules are a little more restrictive than some of the
examples call for; most of us either expand the definition of the word
"possessive" a bit or choose the linguistic term "genitive" instead. The
passage in TKD does not say anything about forming a compound itself; it
speaks of combining nouns *in the manner of* a compound.
While we definitely *see* compound nouns made up of more than two nouns,
we don't have a clear indication that we can *make* them. Even when we
do make them, we don't have a clear way to interpret them except as a
noun-noun "possessive" construction. But that's not always how compound
nouns should be interpreted -- for example, {puqbe'} isn't intended to be
"child's female".
Unless you're absolutely certain of your context, or you plan to explain
your newly coined term completely, it's usually a good idea to avoid the
lack of clarity that a compound noun brings with it.
-- ghunchu'wI'