tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Aug 07 23:37:35 1995
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Re: }} -mo' and N1's N2
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: }} -mo' and N1's N2
- Date: Mon, 7 Aug 1995 22:37:35 -0500
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charghwI' writes:
>> QIt Hergh QaywI' yInob nom ra' Qel.
>
>The doctor quickly ordered, "Slowly give me a hypo!"
Yes. My proposal permits this ambiguity; since you reject my proposal you
will translate it as you do. Most people will. Because of that, I would
not use my proposed effect of {-wI'} to turn "complex" sentences into
nouns. Since I can avoid ambiguity by translating another way, I will do
so.
>>{V-wI'} is equivalent to {V-bogh vay'}:
>
>It is not an exact equivalence. {V-wI'} is a subset of {V-bogh
>vay'}. The latter can take adverbials and objects. The former
>cannot. That is because the latter is a relative clause while
>the former is a nominalized verb. There is a fundamental
>difference between the options available to a clause and those
>available to a single word.
Were it not for the {N V-wI'} examples, I would agree. But because TKD
calls N-N the "Klingon possessive construction" and I don't think
"radiation's changer" makes sense as a "possessive" or even as a
"genitive", I think my proposed explanation is appropriate.
>> {QIt Hergh Qaybogh jan'e' yInob.} Do you have any problems with this?
>
>No.
(Aha! You fell for my clever trap!) This sentence has the same ambiguity
as {QIt Hergh QaywI' yInob} would if {-wI'} worked the way I propose, so my
so-called extension of the language apparently isn't the major ambiguity
source you keep claiming it is.
>> {nom pumtaHvIS nagh jIghItlh.}
>
>Interesting that you chose to use a dependent clause that does
>not have a Type 9 suffix at all to show how ambiguous
>adverbials are with verbs with Type 9 suffixes...
Oops! Make that {nom pummo' nagh jIghItlh} and ignore my blush.
>Still, I take your argument seriously and you do have a point.
>Meanwhile, MY point is that we don't need yet another way to
>make the word order ambiguous. We really don't gain nearly as
>much as we lose.
Poetry nearly always benefits from increased flexibility, so maybe in
addition to preventing the need to extend the N-N construction, we also
gain increased expressiveness. This is at the cost of increased POTENTIAL
for ambiguity.
>Still, the point about adverbials is that you have no
>justification for applying them to nominalized verbs. Face it,
>you are applying an adverbial to a NOUN. Once a verb gets
>{-wI'} applied to it, that word is no longer a verb. It is a
>noun, and if you try to apply an adverbial to it, you are
>simply wrong.
>
>Deal with it.
On the face of it, you're absolutely correct. TKD does consistently say
that {-wI'} turns verbs into nouns. However, I HAVE found at least an
implication that the verb MAY have an object! Section 3.2.2, page 20,
mentions
TKD> ...{baHwI'} "gunner", which consists of the verb
TKD> {baH} "fire (a torpedo)" plus {-wI'} "one who does."
TKD> Thus {baHwI'} is literally "one who fires [a torpedo]."
(I use braces where TKD has boldface, and quotes instead of italics.)
The implied object occurs in both the Klingon and the English. So there's
at least a teeny bit of canon support for my proposal. (Hah!)
>First of all, your explanation doesn't really help anything.
>The Noun-noun construction does a fine job of describing {HoS
>lIngwI'}.
I would like to see a better explanation of how N-N describes {HoS lIngwI}.
The article in HolQeD 3:3 by d'Armond Speers dismisses the two troublesome
examples with "special remarks" about how "...[{Hergh QaywI'}'s] derivation
is clearly 'thing which transfers medicine'... even though the solution is
not immediately evident in either the translation or even the
straightforward interpretation of this example I believe that it poses no
difficulty for the CS structure." I am afraid this so-called explanation
doesn't quite help me to understand WHY he believes this.
>Secondly, it opens the door to your misuse of adverbials.
If this were MY language :-), I'd forbid adverbials in nominalized
sentences, perhaps limiting them to sentences with an implied third-person
subject and an optional object, but I would permit the nominalized
sentences in the first place.
For the benefit of anyone who has tuned in late, I will restate my
position. Certain apparent noun-noun phrases in canon are of the form
{noun verb-wI'}. The way I interpret the noun-noun construction, these
phrases exceed the reasonable bounds of "possession." I propose that the
type 9 verb suffix {-wI'} actually operates on sentences rather than on
verbs alone. It simply makes more sense to me to state that {woj choHwI'}
is a noun which means "thing which changes radiation" instead of a "changer
that 'belongs to' radiation".
-- ghunchu'wI'