tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Apr 22 16:16:59 2008

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Re: cha' Hol ngeb mu'ghommey Daj vItu'pu'!

David Trimboli ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

Steven Boozer wrote:

> Voragh:
>>>>> *{paqtej}  "bibliographer"?
>>>>> *{paqSuy}  "bookseller"?
> 
> SuStel:
>>>> I see no basis on which you can turn these into compound nouns. {paq
>>>> tej, paq Suy}. The first one is a little vague as well; "book scientist"
>>>> might mean several things.
> 
> I see no basis on which we can't.  The fact that we have no known examples 
> in the corpus of these two specific nouns appearing in compounds is not 
> evidence that they can't be so used.

One cannot go coining compound nouns. TKD explains how compound nouns 
are formed, but it doesn't give us license to make our own.

> SuStel:
>> If your basic premise were correct, I would accept *{paqQeD}
>> unhesitatingly. We do have more evidence regarding {QeD} in compound
>> nouns, so I'd have a lot less trouble accepting *{paqQeD} as a
>> well-formed word, regardless of the validity of *{paqtej}.
> 
> Okrand writes WRT Klingon science:
> 
>    Three groups of words in particular are, for the most part,
>    unrepresented: scientific terminology [...] Terms associated
>    with the various sciences are the subject of a special study,
>    and a report is currently being prepared.  [TKD 9]
> 
> Until that report is ready, we can only look at the known examples {HolQeD} 
> "linguistics", {nughQeD} "sociology" and {HuchQeD} "economics" - though 
> Okrand hints that the latter is not exactly kosher:

We can look at them, but their existence is not proof of a license to 
compound {QeD} with anything. At best we can say that there is a pattern 
to follow. But the followation of that pattern may be errage, even if it 
seems perfectly senseful.

-- 
SuStel
Stardate 8309.2

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