tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jan 30 21:24:58 1994
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augmentative/diminutive
>From: [email protected]
>Date: Sat, 29 Jan 94 11:58:31 EST
>I had always thought a bit differently about Klingon augmentatives and
>diminutives. Instead of thinking in terms of "big"/"small", (a useful
>convention, albeit one that imesho distorts the true meaning), I think of
>them as denoters of magnified/diminished _meaning_ of a word, not its size.
>To bring this idea home, look up "slave" in TKD's addendum. It's
>{toy'wI''a'}. To our common notion of {-'a'} this should mean "large
>servant." But instead of magnifying the _size_ of the servant, it magnifies
>the _semantic value_-- one step beyond a servant, a para-servant.
>Not to say we should translate {-'a'} as "para-".
>{chay' tujang}
Hmm. Well, you have a point. I think it is a mistake to think of "X'a'"
as "big X". That's what "tIn" is for. Besides, that's not how
augmentitives and diminuatives work in general. You might translate "beH"
as "rifle", and "beH'a'" should be (in my opinion) "cannon", not just
"really big rifle". Similarly, we know that a "SuS'a'" and a "SuSHom" are
not related in *size* to a "SuS" (wind doesn't really h ave a size anyway),
but are related in force, as you would suggest. Similarly a "Duy'a'" is a
more important "Duy". Note here that an ambassador is no more of an
emissary than an ordinary agent, just a more important one. The "vaS'a'"
is augmented to indicate physical size and importance. Also a "van'a'" is
a more important "van", and sort of a "van" taken one step further.
"bIQ'a'" is size and importance, but it's not more wet. "ghom'a'" is size
and aspect (a crowd is more "groupy" than a regular group).
A "lupDujHom" is physically a small ship, and a be'Hom a small female, but
a "mangHom" needn't be smaller than a full-fledged "mang"; just lesser.
Basically, if you find yourself using "-'a'" as a replacement for "tIn",
you're probably missing the point. But I don't think you can pin down the
meaning of "-'a'"/"-Hom" so concretely. The alter some aspect of size,
importance, or quality in hopefully an intuitive way, but not necessarily
an algorithmically predictable one. If you speak a language that uses
augmentitives (like Esperanto's "-eg" and "-et", for example), you might
try using those as a starting point for your understanding.
>ghaytan HujwI' vIDalaw' neH
rejmorgh yIDaQo', yIQuch neH. (I think that works much better than
"yISaHQo'", even if it's slightly wordier. It carries the meaning better).
~mark