tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Dec 24 06:23:27 1996
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Re: Use of Verbs + types + -wI'
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>Date: Tue, 24 Dec 1996 00:37:48 -0800
>From: [email protected]
>
>>From some discussiona long time ago about "Buy me a drink," we could now
>produce such words as {tlhutlhlu'wI'} for "drink, that which is drunk."
> {ghojmoHwI'} becomes "teacher"; and {pe''eghwI'} becomes "scorekeeper."
> Others might include {ja'chuqwI'pu'} for "conferees."
>
>Basically, I have searched through TKD looking for a reason why we cannot use
>a verb + -lu' + wI'. I have not found any such reason. Still, most of the
>words I read on this listserv using -wI' to change a verb into a noun have
>-wI' on the bare stem. I have not seen before anyone attempting to use verb
>+ -lu' + -wI'. I still seek comments as to the validity of such
>constructions. After all, this construction opens up numerous possibilites
>for new translations of English nouns.
Aha, you didn't say -lu'.
I was thinking about this after writing my letter to you, and realized
there are some exceptions, at least from a semantic point of view (if not
syntactic).
To answer your main question first, I don't think "-lu'" can be used with
"-wI'." Here's why. The suffix "-wI'" essentially says "ok, take the verb
and imagine its action. Consider its *subject*. That subject is the noun
I'm talking about." So "SuvwI'" means "consider fighting, and think of the
subject, the person/thing doing the fighting. The fighter. That's who I
mean." Ditto "HoHwI'," "DevwI'" and so on. In a way, it sort of does a
lambda-binding on the subject place of the verb.
Now look at "-lu'." It *also* affects the subject place: it says "The
subject of this verb is indefinite." So "Duj leghlu'" means "something
indefinite sees the ship." The "-lu'" suffix fills the subject place with
a special "indefinite" placeholder.
Now do you see why the two don't combine? They're trying to cram two very
different things into the subject place. One says "The subject is
indefinite and unimportant" and the other says "the subject is what I'm
talking about." Blarp, core error. If it could mean anything
"*tlhutlhlu'wI'" would have to mean something like "something indefinite
which drinks," but even that doesn't work. Note that it can't be the
drink, which after all is the OBJECT of "tlhutlhlu'", not the subject, and
"-wI'" refers to the subject, the "thing which does."
As to other ones, most make certain amounts of sense. "-'egh" means that
the object is the same as the subject. So a "legh'eghwI'" means (a)
there's seeing going on, (b) the object of the seeing is the same as the
subject, (c) the subject of the seeing is what I'm talking about. So it's
"one who sees himself." No problem. "SuvchuqwI'", by similar reasoning,
would have to mean "ones who fight one another" (note, though, that it can
only be plural, since -chuq doesn't make sense with singulars).
So there are some semantic limitations placed on the use of suffixes here,
based on their meanings.
~mark
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