tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Mar 02 21:50:45 1997
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Re: KLBC: New Words - magic, magician
Alan Anderson wrote:
>
> 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!
>
As Yoda would say, "That is why you fail!"
You have, probably by accident written the first Zen-Klingon:
literally Know-not know, or "Know without knowing" the state that all
the old Samurai and monks worked their whole life to attain. Zen has
rules, but the great masters seldom passed them along by rote. They
made their students find the answers on their own.
> 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 above 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'}.
>
In English, and many other languages, especially those that have grown
through the absorbtion of other words and dialects (the Empire had to
absorb the rival cultures of the various isolated clans and
city-states), it is the exception that proves the rule. I find a rule
that says "add wI' to a verb and make it a new noun associated with the
verb." I find more examples in the known language and work the logic
and see few examples of "accidentally ending in -wI'. Which is the more
logical? That the rule MOST OFTEN applies, or MOST OFTEN is an accident
handed us by the Master Okrand?
> >????? 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'
Perhaps, like the apprentices to the Zen Masters of old, we are to
discover new truths on our own! There is no rule that says it is
FORBIDDEN to compound verbs into a single word, either.
In the words of the Zen Masters, "Where was the white horse when you
didn't think about it?"
If it has not been discovered in the research up to now, does that mean
that it cannot be? Dinosaurs were thought to be cold-blooded until
recently, and all suggestions otherwise were ridiculed!