tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 22 19:18:55 1996
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Re: Some risque (not "risky") interpretations
>Date: Mon, 22 Jan 1996 05:53:57 -0800
>From: "Lord Havelock Sinister" <[email protected]>
>In reply to some of your comments on <nga/chuq>:
>Bear in mind that at no point has Marc Okrand stated that nga'chuq is
>any sort of "fossilised" verb construct. The term is just presented
>to you without comment.
Indeed so! However, the putative verb "*nga'" is notably absent from the
presentation. It may be that it is in fact a perfectly good and valid and
current word... however, we cannot make that assumption based on the
existence of "nga'chuq," since another possible explanation for "nga'chuq"
is that it is a fossilized construction. "nga'chuq" does not in and of
itself rule out a verb "?nga'" (aside from raising the issue of why "?nga'"
wasn't included when "nga'chuq" was), but it also does not in and of itself
provide evidence for it.
>Granted, I can accept that <nga'chuq> could easily be a bisyllabic
>verb whose second component is identical in sound to the Type 1
>suffix -chuq, carrying no further meaning than that; but since Marc
>has stated that the term is always used with a subject prefix, it can
>be assumed that the <-chuq> in question is our old Type 1 friend,
><-chuq> one another. This has to imply the root term *nga' for
><sexual> or whatever.
It has to imply that it probably ONCE EXISTED; it does NOT have to imply
that the verb remains in the current language.
~mark