tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue May 28 11:22:45 2002

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Lexicographical issue...



Hallo, my name is Cees (pr. "case", which I suppose could be 
transcribed as "qeyS" in tlhIngan Hol) and I'm new to this list. I'm a 
Dutch student of English at the University of Groningen and I'm 
honoured to be a new member of the list. So you know...

Question: I'm writing a paper for a course on lexicography and the 
topic I've chosen is (rather daringly) which lexicographical 
conventions are/aren't applied to the TKD and which conventions 
still could be applied to the TKD in order to improve it (from a 
lexicographical perspective...)

One problem I've stumbled on (if it concerns the phenomenon of 
'nesting' in dictionaries) is the existence of English compound 
nouns. It almost seems to me that the rules for writing Klingon 
compound nouns are almost as much vague as the rules for writing 
English compound nouns. Okrand mentions one compound noun in 
the general discussion on compound nouns (Okrand 1992, p. 19) 
and the one he mentions is written WITHOUT a space: "jolpa'." 
BUT, in the Dictionary part of the KGT are some compound nouns 
which are written WITH a space: "Dargh HIvje' ": teapot. This, I do 
not understand. The question I address to the list is the following: 

What are the rules for the construction and writing of compound 
nouns, and what are the exceptions if there are any?

If anyone can help me any further on this issue, I'd be 
extraordinarily pleased, and if anyone knows anything that has 
already been written on Klingon lexicography, than I'd be pleased if 
that particular person would want to share that knowledge with me.

Kind regards,

qeyS.


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