tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Mar 15 01:22:59 1994
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Gerunds
- From: [email protected] (Mark E. Shoulson)
- Subject: Gerunds
- Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 14:21:03 -0500
- In-Reply-To: Erich Schneider's message of Tue, 15 Mar 94 09:20:44 CST <9403151520.AA16896@ bush.cs.tamu.edu>
>From: [email protected] (Erich Schneider)
>Date: Tue, 15 Mar 94 09:20:44 CST
>Shoulsonvo':
>content-length: 350
>>OK, the reason you couldn't find anything on infinitives and gerunds in TKD
>>is pretty simple: Klingon doesn't have them. Really. It makes do with
>>subordinate clauses.
>It's always been my view that -ghach is a gerund marker. The way it's
>described certainly makes it sound like such, even if it isn't
>actually stated to be such.
Well, "-ghach" is really very badly described, hence all the arguments
about it. We've seen it used as a nominalizer for finite verbs (which
isn't quite gerund-use), and also what it nominalizes into seems in flux in
the use I've seen. Sometimes "X-ghach" means "the act of X-ing" (gerund),
sometimes it seems to be a complement to "-wI'" meaning "that which is
X-ed", much as "gift" in English can mean the act of giving (he favored us
with the gift of a car) or that which is given. I'm not sure if this is
right, but it's certainly used a *lot* in the texts I've seen. Basically,
I don't know what to think of "-ghach" yet.
>-QumpIn 'avrIn
~mark