tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 16 10:50:17 1996
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Re: Nouns as Verbs
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>Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 17:22:08 -0700
>From: "Dr. Maciej St. Zieba" <[email protected]>
>"Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>Is the tenth ga.na really denominative? I thought the cvi pratyaya was
>>used more for that. I'm not sure what it has to do with Klingon, though.
>The tenth class contains both denominatives and causatives.
>I don't understand what is *cvi* pratyaya.
It's, um, the cvi pratyaya (is my transliteration confusing you? I
write "c" for the voiceless, unaspirated taalavya consonant, to save "ch"
for the aspirated one). Let's see, it involves suffixing "ii" and then a
form of bhuu or k.r... It's been a while since I studied Sanskrit, so I
probably just didn't remember the denominative content of the tenth ga.na;
whatever.
>Nevertheless your example with a toy and voltage is exagerated, the proof:
>the success of having translated Hamlet and the Gospel, and the Sonnets etc.
I don't buy that. That only means that the simple mechanisms of the
language suffice for the purposes of expressiveness. The Bible has been
translated into gobs of languages, including languages with very strict,
rigid structures and few idioms (e.g..... Klingon, as used by the
translators so far). To say that that suddenly makes the structure of a
language more complex is confusing levels. Sanskrit has more verb and noun
constructions than you can shake a stick at, syntax and idiom to beat the
band, and generally a lot of leeway in sentence construction and meaning.
To try to apply that to Klingon, with its rigid word-order, bare handful of
prepositions and subordinating constructions, and our weak comprehension of
its idioms (the last, of course, is a problem with ourselves and not the
language, and could in theory be remedied) still seems to me to be
like... well, plugging a battery-powered toy, etc.
>The answer of yours that is to some degree satisfactory to me is:
>>>> There's no evidence of
>>>> any generic verbalizing construction that I know of.
>>>> There are ways to use
>>>> the nouns, though...
>and if you could explain me in details what do you mean by "ways
>to use nouns ..." I would be wholy satisfied.
Oh, using subordinate clauses to explain, etc. Especially with vague verbs
like "lo'".
>>I guess, then, that the best answer to your question of "do we have
>>something that does this in Klingon?" is "No." I've never seen any
>>evidence of such a thing. Maybe there will be one someday, though I doubt
>>it. But I could be wrong.
>>
>Finally a Klingo-like answer. I like the cold straitforwardness of your
>"NO". Why only is it weakened with "I guess" and "But I could be wrong"?
Yes, this was finally the right answer. I had been answering the question
"Why don't we have this in Klingon?" when in fact you had asked "Do we have
this in Klingon?" The latter is much easier.
~mark
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