tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Mar 02 20:56:16 1997
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Re: KLBC: New Words - magic, magician
David Trimboli wrote:
> No way. You can't do this. {chamwI'} is a noun, but there's no verb {cham}.
> You cannot extrapolate like this. If anyone could make up words like this,
> pretty soon no one would be able to understand anyone else. I, for one,
>would
> have no clue about what {chambe'cham} was supposed to mean.
I *still* don't know what it's supposed to mean. Let's pick a verb that
we *do* agree exists -- how would I understand {Sovbe'Sov}? I wouldn't!
Jim LeMaster writes:
>I am sorry, but beginner or not, I do NOT see where you are coming from
>here! There is a known word "technician" but no real word for
>"technology".
This is true. There's also a noun {jonwI'} "engineer", but the verb
{jon} means "capture". We know {HaqwI'} is "surgeon" but don't have
any other evidence for {Haq} as a verb.
>A noun is often made (most often made) from taking the
>verb or noun form and adding -wI' (one who does/uses X). With a
>new/growing language, the only ways to produce new words are:(1) make
>them up of whole cloth; (2) combine known to form new {i.e. the way that
>modern German does}; and (3) to take a known and extrapolate from it.
>I do NOT see that I broke any grammarian rules. I would bow to greater
>knowledge/or wholesale opinion about my theory that "cham" was either a
>noun or verb, but not that I "broke the rules" in its creation!
You tried to apply the rules in reverse; we can't do that. What we
have is a way to produce actor nouns from verbs. We don't have any
rules that say we can undo the process.
David Trimboli again:
> Now you're not only pulling apart word elements illegally, you're also making
> a verb compound, which is not permitted either.
Jim LeMaster again:
>---see aboove for my opinion on "pulling apart word elements illegally."
We can't extrapolate from singular examples. {jajlo'} *looks* like it
might be made from the nouns {jaj} "day" and {lo'} "use", but is that
*really* its origin? The noun {qa'meH} is quite far removed from its
supposed source words; perhaps {chamwI'} is similarly distant from the
true words that it is derived from, if indeed it is derived at all and
not just a noun that "accidentally" ends in {-wI'}.
>????? Why are compound verbs illegal? My TKD, though not memorized,
>doesn't seem to support this allegation!
There is no mention anywhere in TKD of compound verbs. There are a
couple of clues that verbs can be used in series for specific shades
of meaning, e.g. {DeSvetlh chop chev} "bite that arm off!" But the
verbs don't seem to be compounded into a single word.
-- ghunchu'wI'