tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Sep 04 06:50:05 1996
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Re: tlhIngan Hol chu' ghojwI'. jIH ghaj pung.
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: tlhIngan Hol chu' ghojwI'. jIH ghaj pung.
- Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1996 09:50:02 -0400 (EDT)
- In-reply-to: <[email protected]> (message fromdpNoll on Tue, 3 Sep 1996 06:53:08 -0700)
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>Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996 06:53:08 -0700
>From: dpNoll <[email protected]>
>ghItlh Mitchel Ross:
>[...]
>> I had a hard time
>> with "computer user". A computer is that which uses data, and a
>> user is that which uses a computer. I really wanted to use
>> "De'wI'wI'", which is jibberish. Comments?
>I'm not a 'professional', in fact far from it, so I'll probably get
>castrated for commenting here, but here it goes:
>I don't think you can construe *De'wI'* to be a word meaning "thing which
>uses data", as so far as we know, *De'* is only a noun and the *wI'* suffix
>meaning "thing which does" is only used on verbs. I think that the word
>for "computer" is the only example of this construct, so it can't really be
>generalised.
>For a "computer user", you could have a "user of computers", so perhaps
>{De'wI' lo'wI'} would be a more appropriate construct for your purpose.
Your answer is sound and quite correct, and pretty much what I would have
said (though you may have made a minor mistake). "-wI'" is a verb-suffix
and is not known to be generally productive on nouns (though De'wI' is
arguably not the only example [that was your minor mistake]:
jonwI'/engineer is probably derived from jonta'/engine [despite the -ta'
ending]). It isn't obvious that you can stick -wI' on anything but verbs
(the -wI' that means doer; the -wI' that means "my" of course is a noun
suffix). I'd go with De'wI' lo'wI' as well.
~mark
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