tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Mar 01 11:33:15 2004
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Re: chuv
On Mon, 1 Mar 2004, David Trimboli wrote:
> From: <[email protected]>
> > would it be legit to say that {chuv} can also be used as a singular noun
> > meaning 'a leftover (grammatical term)'? or must it always be used in the
> plural?
>
> I wouldn't say that. {chuvmey} has its own entry in TKD; {chuv} (n) is
> nowhere in sight. If {chuv} (n) were a normal, lexicalized word, why
> wouldn't it have had its own entry, instead of {chuvmey}?
>
> It is likely that {chuvmey} is a special piece of grammatical argot (indeed,
> it is defined as a grammatical term) that developed with grammarians
> wiggling their quotation fingers (or the Klingon equivalent) whenever they
> said it, until it became the defacto word; or else it's a . . . ahem . . .
> leftover from a noun form of {chuv} that no longer exists.
As a counterpoint, IIRC, we have "chenmoH" in the dictionary specifically
as well, but I've been told that if I wanted to say "he needs to create" I
would NOT say */chenmoHnIS/.
Now, admittedly, /chen/ does already exist in the dictionary as a verb,
whereas /chuv/ does not exist as a noun...
But the corrolary would be, what if I wanted to use /chuvmey/ with a Type
1 noun suffix? Would it be */chuvmey'a'/ or */chuv'a'mey/ ? This is
where this kind of oddity becomes problematic.
Another point to consider is that there are definitely words that have
appeared on one side of the translation but not the other -- and at least
once case where the translations actually differ for the same word.
Are there any other words in the dictionary that appear ONLY with what
appears to be a suffix? I saw that other great post with an accumulation
of all the words that have suffixes specifically in the dictionary, but I
don't remember it saying which ones did not have a lone stem also into the
dictionary...
...Paul
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