tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Feb 16 15:13:34 1997
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RE: Word Origin Speculation II
- From: "David Trimboli" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: Word Origin Speculation II
- Date: Sun, 16 Feb 97 20:44:46 UT
February 16, 1997 10:38 AM EST, jatlh Ken Traft (or Glen Proechel, I'm not
sure which!):
> D'armand Spears
You mean D'Armond Speers?
> recently called into question the existence of a category of
> related words called "reversies" in which words which are either synonyms
and
> antonyms or related in some other way are created by simply reversing the
> order of the phonemes. it was not my intention to provide a complete list.
i
> felt that readers were intelligent enough to do that for themselves.
however,
> now that I have been challenged, I should like to provide a longer list of
> examples.
>
> SIm/mIS (calculate/confuse)
You apparently assert that the relationship is between careful thought on the
one hand and lack of careful thought on the other. As I've stated, this is
possibly what's going on, but I don't think so.
> jab/baj (serve food -- as a job/earn)
No way. {baj} wasn't even introduced until TKW. And there are lots of
occupations to choose from!
> je/'ej (and/and)
> joq/qoj (and/or)
> ghap/pagh (either/or)
These three were very obviously done intentionally, but they hardly count as
individual "reversies." I'd lump them all in one count, for this purpose.
> mup/pum (strike, fall)
Hmmm . . . I don't know about it, but it's a good one.
> ghup/pugh (swallow, dregs)
Huh? Where did this come from? What has "dregs" got to do with swallowing?
{ghup} looks to me to be a fairly obvious Klingon onomatopoeia.
> This brings the total to twelve
I count fourteen, but surely each pair should get one count?
> -- does twelve "reversies" constitute a
> significant observation? qatlhochnIS!
I, for one, agree that the category exists, and I'm sure that d'Armond does
too, but which examples belong to it is a matter still up in the air.
> Another category which d'armand Spears appears to be unaware of is those
words
> which use q a Q as semantically related phonemes. (I say this because of
his
> rejection of the pair puq/Qup (child, young)
>
> qam/Qam (foot, stand)
Yes, this one is pretty obvious.
> wuq/wuQ (decide, headache)
Hmmm . . . maybe. I can't decide (ouch!).
> qay'/Qay' (problem, blow one's top)
> qeH/QeH (resent, be angry)
> qaq/QaQ (preferable, good)
All of these are possible, especially, I think, the last one.
--
SuStel
Beginners' Grammarian
Stardate 97130.4