tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Apr 21 02:28:11 1994

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Re: Nick's comments on HolQeD 3.1



charghwI'vo':
Nick, 

Opinion:
     Your stuff to Krankor is difficult to read, not because it is technical
but because it carries a lawyer-styled nastiness to it. It sounds as if you
consider yourself to be COMPLETELY right and anyone in any way opposed to any
thread of your opinion is an idiot. That's not a good way to win friends and
influence people. It personally makes me want to disagree with you, even when
I think you are right. I doubt that's the effect you seek.

Back to Hol:

Nickvo':
> =>2. Krankor's position on -ghach is at odds with his usual procedure of
> =>taking the most *conservative* solution in such cases 

Krankorvo':
> =I disagree.  I think I am being extremely conservative.  The
> =-taHghach solution requires postulating a rule which is, at best,
> =only implied, whereas in all other cases of special suffix
> =restrictions, such as -taH being required with -vIS, the
> =restrictions have always been given extremely explicitly.
Nickvo':
> Then we have a very different definition of conservatism. My definition
> is an interpretation of the rules that presumes the smaller amount of
> possible utterances is actually grammatical. There is disagreement on
> whether VERB+ghach is grammatical. There is no disagreement on whether
> VERB+taHghach is grammatical. 

charghwI'vo':
     Excuse me. There is some disagreement, given that I disagree with it. As
I see the point Proechel brought up, {-ghach} quite possibly was not ever
intended to be a global nominalizer. It was quite possibly cooked up
specifically to cover verbs that could not be used as nouns because they had
verbal suffixes. That is not the same thing as saying that any verb with a
suffix can use {-ghach}. My understanding of it was that a verb that got an
essential piece of its meaning from a suffix such as {-Ha'}, which is the
ONLY suffix explicitly endorsed by Okrand, needed a way to be used as a noun.
Okrand came up with {-ghach} to cover this specific need. As usual, he left
the door open for a future decision to cover future unforseen needs.

     I suspect {-moH} might not be far behind {-Ha'} as an appropriate suffix
to a verb that essentially changes the meaning from the root in such a way
that no bare verb stem could be used to carry that meaning. Meanwhile, {-taH}
is so plainly being used as a band-aid excuse for getting past the Proechel
observation that I avoid it AT LEAST AS MUCH as I avoid using {-ghach} on a
bare verb stem. In fact, while I do not quite buy Krankor's belief that it is
okay to use {-ghach} on a bare verb, I think it is a more honest approach to
nominalization than {-taHghach}.

     While we lack the license Proechel claims to use any verb as a noun,
Okrand does not. He can use any verb as a noun, unless that verb has a suffix
on it like {-Ha'} or {-moH}. At that point, he needed a device to create a
word that meant "discommendation". That's where {-ghach} was created, and I
doubt he put any thought whatsoever into any other potential uses for it.

     Furthermore, I think our tendency to use either {-ghach} or {-wI'} on
verbs that have prefixes is just a wee bit of a stretch on anything explained
in TKD. It logically makes sense and it can be decoded/understood. Still, we
made it up. It is not in TKD, nor is it even indirectly suggested there.

     At least that's MY "conservative" view.

charghwI'



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