tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 11 20:24:13 2000

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Type 5 noun suffixes (was Re: Deixis and direction)



ja' HomDoq:
>...Maybe one reason why only rovers are allowed on attributive
>verbs is that they (the attributive verbs) occupy a "suffix-slot" 4.5
>
>(I don't really believe that, but I also don't think it is that
>contrived either)

I almost like that idea a lot.  It would fit much nicer if the rovers
weren't *verb* suffixes, however.

If we look at things from a related but slightly different angle, the Type
5 noun suffixes *shouldn't* be seen as essentially like other suffixes.
Perhaps they are remnants of an older form of the language in which they
were separate words, the way {Daq} is.  That would help explain why they
follow adjectival verbs.  There is already a class of nouns that acts this
way; we usually call them "time stamps".  {ben} and {leS} just sit there in
the front of a sentence, and their meaning is understood because we've been
told how they work.  An archaic {vo'} "from-ness" could have worked in much
the same way.

[Hmm.  Can anyone think of a simple sentence with {ben} as the subject?]

I agree with SuStel's assessment that there's no explicit grammatical rule
preventing Type 5 suffixes from appearing on nouns acting as subjects, and
the fact that we never see them there is because they just don't make sense
that way.  But there *is* an explicit restriction keeping Type-5-suffixed
nouns from appearing as the first noun of a noun-noun construction, and
that's another point against lumping all noun suffixes in the "just a noun
suffix" category.

We must accept that Type 5 noun suffixes really do have an exceptional
status.




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