tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Apr 29 16:52:34 2006

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Re: {Qong} and other unattested nouns

QeS 'utlh ([email protected]) 

jItlhobpu', jIja':
>I'm not quite sure what you're arguing here. Can you clarify?

mujang Shane MiQogh, ja':
>What i'm saying is, when we use it as a noun, it's usually in the past
>tense,

nuqjatlh? Nouns cannot carry tense in English.

>"have slept" or "i need to have sleep"

Or "I need to have *a* sleep".

>which sleep in this cause should have been used as a past tense verb.
>Technically then, sleep is a verb and only a verb in english.

Nope. "Sleep" in English is a noun not only meaning "the action of sleeping" 
(as in "I didn't get a wink of sleep last night"), but also "a period of 
time during which one sleeps", as in my above example "I need to have a 
sleep". Or "I had a good sleep last night". This is the sense in which the 
pair "to sleep" and "sleep" parallels "to live" and "life".

>To live is the action of continueing through life. Since we have taH
>we don't even need the verb form but it's in there for conveniance.

We don't really need a noun {Qong} either, but it could be there. Just 
because a word isn't strictly necessary doesn't invalidate it as a word 
(otherwise synonymy would not occur in any language). English is a 
marvellous example of redundancy in a language.

QeS 'utlh
tlhIngan Hol yejHaD pabpo' / Grammarian of the Klingon Language Institute


not nItoj Hemey ngo' juppu' ngo' je
(Old roads and old friends will never deceive you)
     - Ubykh Hol vIttlhegh

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