tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jan 11 17:24:56 1995
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limitation of {-ghach}
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: limitation of {-ghach}
- Date: Wed, 11 Jan 1995 20:24:36 -0500
>It appears to me, however, that the {-ghach} problem is not so >profound as
Qanqor makes it out to be.
Just something else I should mention. Krankor did a somewhat nice job with
his {-ghach} article, but he really didn't pinpoint the thing I thought was
important. It is now clear, of course, that the scope of {-ghach} has been
limited semantically. Krankor described this limitation by saying that verbs
with {-ghach} are translated with the "-tion/-ness" suffix(es) in English.
That really doesn't pin it down enough.
{-ghach} is limited in scope, because it describes the ***abstract quality of
an occurence or state.*** That is what Krankor didn't seem to make clear,
altho it may be already generally understood anyways, but I just wanted to
get it off my chest, so there.
Keeping that in mind, it's fine to use {-ghach} on verbs (mostly on already
suffixed ones) to express such an abstract idea. {-ghach} is unique among
Klingon affixes for being the only one that's really hard to pin down. It is
the least semantically clear, in other words. Klingon is really better off
without it most of the time, but it's a nice touch. But just using it too
much brings your Klingon closer to English and further from itself, whatever
the bloody hell that means.
Guido