tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 02 10:33:05 1998

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Re: KLBC: -ghach

According to David Trimboli:
> 
> From: Steven Boozer <[email protected]>
> 
> >Kryntes wrote:
> >
> >: Can -ghach be used with all verbs
... 
> 
> One way to limit yourself, and to keep with apparent Klingon usage, is to
> only use {-ghach} on verbs which have a noun counterpart.  All of the
> examples of {-ghach} that Okrand has used, except one ({tlhutlhtaHghach}),
> have a noun counterpart.

While I'm SERIOUSLY hesitant to stop ANYBODY from limiting the
overuse of {-ghach}, I don't think this generality really has
much going for it. I doubt that Okrand has intentionally chosen
the verbs he's added {-ghach} to such that they have a noun
counterpart.

The main point here is that when Okrand started the language,
he wanted to focus on verbs and make nouns as he needed to.
Often, he used verb roots as nouns when he wanted to
appropriately expand the vocabulary. He didn't want everybody
doing this, however, so he made it pretty clear in TKD that we
can't just randomly use verbs as nouns. He can. We can't.

Then he ran into a problem. He needed to translate
"discommendation". He could have just made up a new word with
that meaning, but he had {naD}, which meant "commend". It
struck him that it would be interesting to have a suffix which
turned a verb with a suffix into a noun. This way, {naDHa'}
could be nominalized. He invented {-ghach} and didn't really
think a lot about its potential for abuse.

Since most Klingonists speak languages which emphasize nouns,
many early Klingonists leapt at {-ghach} as a tool to help them
phrase things in familiar grammatical constructions, using any
verb they wanted as a noun.

Glen Prochel rightly figured out that {-ghach} was only
intended to be used on verbs WITH SUFFIXES. Having been made
that excellent realization, he then wrongly presumed that in
all cases where you want to use a verb without a suffix as a
noun, he could just use the verb as a noun.

Much blood was spilled in the insuing arguments. The
understanding that I've come away with at this point is:

1. If you can use a verb as a verb instead of trying to turn it
into a noun, use it as a verb. If you follow this rule whenever
possible, you won't abuse {-ghach}.

2. Never use {-ghach} on a bare verb stem. Since verbs turned
into nouns can have many different meanings, the suffix gives
us clues as to what property of the verb to nominalize.

In English, we arbitrarily pick a noun meaning from verbs used
as nouns and then we learn what we mean by memorization of
vocabulary. The verb "stop" has a pretty clear meaning, but the
noun "stop" can be a place where things stop (bus stop) or
thing that makes something stop (door stop) or the ability to
stop (stop watch) or the act of stopping (coming to a full
stop).

In Klingon, I'd handle each of these "stop"s differently:

lupwI' ghochHom = bus stop
lojmIt 'uchwI' = door stop
poHHom qarqu' juvlaHbogh tlhaq'e' = stop watch
mevchu'ta' = He came to a full stop.

Notice that I didn't even THINK of using *{mevghach} or some
suffixed variation thereon. Many earlier Klingonists cared less
about expressing accurate meaning than they cared about quickly
encoding English words into Klingon, and with that as your
mission, {mevghach} would have been very tempting in those
examples.

3. Even if you can't use a verb as a verb, you have to use it
as a noun AND you have an appropriate suffix on the verb such
that the rest of us can figure out what you mean when you add
{-ghach} to a verb, you really should pause and wince before
you use {-ghach}.


When you use {-ghach} you are exhibiting one of two kinds of
behaviors, and you usually can't tell which until later:

1. You have been stricken by brilliance. In a stroke of genius,
you have found exactly the right word where nothing else would
convey the meaning as well.

or

2. You have shown your weakness with the language. You fell to
the lazy encoding of an English noun into a Klingon nominalized
verb.

> Since there are a limited number of noun/verb pairs, you won't be tempted to
> overuse {-ghach}.  Furthermore, you will be doing what {-ghach} seems
> designed for.  Consider: {quv} is a noun meaning "honor."  There is no way
> to make a noun which means "dishonor," until you consider {-ghach}.  To make
> this noun, you take the verb version of the word, {quv} "be honored," add
> the appropriate verb suffix which carries the meaning you're looking for
> ({quvHa'} "be dishonored"), and then "nounify" it again by adding a suffix,
> {-ghach}.  {quvHa'ghach} "dishonor."

That's certainly the root cause for the suffix. Meanwhile,
Okrand can use a bare verb as a noun, and we can't, unless he
did first.

> Note that unless {tlhutlhtaHghach} is an exceptional word, this is not a
> rule.  Still, since every single other example of a {-ghach}'d verb follows
> this pattern, and we have quite a number of {-ghach} words in observable
> usage, it's probably a good bet that the noun/verb pairs are favored by
> Klingons for {-ghach} usage.

I suspect that is a coincidence. Mostly, it is the case that
Okrand doesn't use {-ghach} very much and likely we shouldn't
either. I do from time to time, but I never do so casually.

> Here's an interesting one:
> 
> novHa'ghach
> belongingness

Daj. I must admit that rather than "belongingness", I'd see
this as "repatriation". It would be a noun applied to the act
of someone changing citizenship to some other nation, and later
recanting, reclaiming their original citizenship. It would be
the act of becoming an "un-alien" or "un-foreigner", since
{-Ha'} usually conveys the meaning of either undoing what has
been done, or doing something badly. A thing which goes through
{novHa'ghach} would either have botched the act of becoming
foreign, or undone that act.

But then {-Ha'} is one of our more confusing suffixes.

I will say that I do want to support any limitation on the use
of {-ghach}...

> SuStel
> Stardate 98830.9

charghwI' 'utlh

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