tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jun 01 16:07:02 1997

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Re: KLBC: Words for assassin & blade



On Sun, 1 Jun 1997 08:50:58 -0700 (PDT)  SuSvaj 
<[email protected]> wrote:
> jang SuStel
> 
> > {ghobwI'} is an interesting word.  It certainly means "one who wages
> war," so 
> > we're left with the question of why we don't see this word used as
> "warrior."  
> > Perhaps {ghob} is less concerned with hand-to-hand combat (which would be
> 
> > {Suv}) and refers to large-scale battle. 
> 
> However we have *ghobchuq loDnI'pu'*, as the name of Worf's statue, which
> is certainly a hand to hand combat depiction.  Perhaps *ghobwI'* is a more
> general term, such as "combatant."
> 
> SuSvaj

Or perhaps because we already have {vaj} and {SuvwI'}, we don't 
NEED {ghobwI'}. People who bake food are bakers, but do we refer 
to people who boil food as boilers? Language is arbitrary. In 
this case, the slots needed for "warrior" are already full. We 
could add {-wI'} to several other verbs to make yet another way 
of saying "warrior", but there are already two very familiar 
words to do this, so there is no need.

charghwI'





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