tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Nov 07 12:12:54 2006

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Re: a question of wildlife and syntax

Steven Boozer ([email protected]) 

lay'tel SIvten:
> > But there's no equivalent of the English suffixes "-ness" or "-
> > ity", e.g.

ghunchu'wI':
>{=ghach} can do that too, specifically with verbs of quality.  For
>example, {lo'laHbe'ghach} "worthlessness".


 From Okrand's interview in HQ 3.3 which naHQun posted earlier in the thread:

   MO: That's fine, I think it's a legitimate thing to do assuming the
   verb plus {­taH} is legitimate. It depends on the verb. In the
   dictionary I give four examples and that's all there is. There's
   value, which is used kind of like *worthness and also worthlessness,
   and then discommendation and re-commendation. So what {­ghach} means
   on the basis of these is ­ness or ­tion. ­ness means something like
   the state of being X, or the quality of being X. *Bigness means the
   quality of being big. ­tion involves more activity, so it's an action
   involving something. So recommendation is the action or result of
   recommending, as opposed to the ­ness ones which are more stative
   in English. The examples of {­ghach} there go with both kinds:
   the stative with ­ness and the activity kind with ­tion.

   Z: Just to be clear, you're saying that if it is a stative verb with
   {­ghach} that you are creating a ­ness equivalent in English? And if
   it's a more active or transitive verb you're creating a ­tion type of
   noun?

   MO: Yes. So {­ghach} means something like condition of being X, if X
   is stative. Or action or process involved with, or maybe result of
   the action, but the process involved with Y where Y is, for the lack
   of a better term, an active verb.




--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons

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