tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 05 20:10:50 1995

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Re: Suppletion

Jarno Peschier said:

>the verb = zijn
>...

     I am immediately reminded of the paradigm in German.  It includes the
forms "sein, bin, ist, war, waren," etc.  Apparently this particular
suppletion exists all through the West Germanic languages.  As to North
Germanic, I know no Scandanavian languages, but perhaps there those reading
this who do.  As to East Germanic, my notes on Gothic are both ancient and
not immediately available, but sooner or later I'll find them and check.

>Thanks for the reply. Languages are very interesting, are they not?

     I find them fascinating and have done so since I was introduced to
their existence at the age of seven.  I would be willing to bet that most
serious tlhIngan learners have studied other languages before this, perhaps
several.  How many, for example studied Esperanto at some time before
tlhIngan?  I know from his notes that David Barron has and I first did some
decades back.

>Mmm, I'm no native speaker, but this example sure seems to point in the
>general direction of the existence of suppletion in tlhIngan Hol. Of
>course there are multiple dialects of Klingon (and the official one
>changes with the emperor, right?). To me this seems to be a perfect
>oppurtunity for suppletion to occur; different words for (approx.) the
>same from different dialects working their way into other dialects.

     I would think so, but there is a counter argument:  KLD section 3.3.2
says that these "inherently plural nouns are treated grammatically as
singular nouns."  The fact that they are antecedents for singular pronouns
and take singular subject or singular object, according to the case,
prefixes would seem to indicate that the native speaker probably thinks of
them as separate vocabulary items.  Even if this were so, of course, it
doesn't prove there is no suppletion in tlhIngan, it just takes away the
only examples I have found so far.

>Any true Klingons here who know more about this?

     Anyone?


     Paul

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