tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jul 05 06:29:26 2000
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Re: How to make verb into a noun?
jatlh Albertus A. Arendsen:
> I've been wondering for some time how you can make a verb into a noun.
> For example, take /tammoH/, which is "to silence". Then what's the noun
> "silence"? I have in a few occasions used /Qoylu'vIS pagh/ as a
> surrogate, but that's just that: a surrogate. There are many such cases
> where the dictionary gives you a verb while you want a noun derived from
> that verb. There are ofcourse /-wI'/ which forms one kind of derivate
> noun... Are there any I've missed that are not in TKD? I've seen
> /-ghach/ in action somewhere, but it's not in TKD, and that too doesn't
> seem to do quite what I need...
There is no simple procedure to make a verb into a noun. There are
different options, depending on what you need.
Most of the time, the correct choice is to reword your sentence. Why do you
need the word "silence"? Suppose we have the following:
Because of the silence, one could hear a mouse moving.
You might be tempted to create a Klingon sentence:
Xmo' vIHtaH Qa'Hom net QoylaH.
(With apologies for translating "mouse" as /Qa'Hom/.)
What is /X/, you might ask? Klingon may not have a word which fits into X.
Rather, you must reword your sentence. This is, of course, a common thing
to do when translating sentences.
chuSmo' pagh, vIHtaH Qa'Hom net QoylaH.
Because nothing made noise, one could hear a mouse moving.
There are other possibilities for this sentence, but the point is that
rewording makes the sentence possible, and the rewording usually (but not
always) involves using verbs instead of nouns.
Sometimes it is appropriate to use the suffix /-ghach/. Its use is poorly
described in TKD, and is better explained in HolQeD 3:3. In a nutshell,
/-ghach/ provides a "-ness" or "-tion" meaning to a verb ("act," "action";
"happy," "happiness"). When using it, you need to make sure to have an
additional verb suffix before the /-ghach/. For example, /QuchtaHghach/
"continued happiness." Failure to have this intervening suffix makes the
verb marked to Klingon ears, and will "sound wrong" to them. Don't say
things like /Quchghach/ unless you really want the word to sound silly.
Putting a prefix on a verb with /-ghach/ is even more marked.
So, you COULD come up with the following sentence:
tamtaHghachmo' vIHtaH Qa'Hom net QoylaH.
Because of the continued silence, one could hear a mouse move.
Remember, the meaning of the intervening suffix(es) is very important to a
/-ghach/ed verb, and cannot be ignored. Reliance on /-ghach/ tends to go
against the way Klingons speak; they don't use it very much (as evidenced by
its infrequent appearance in canon where Terrans might be tempted to use it
more).
SuStel
Stardate 510.8