tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Apr 30 01:24:39 2006

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Re: {Qong} and other unattested nouns

QeS 'utlh ([email protected]) 

ghItlhpu' Shane MiQogh, ja':
>I'm suggesting that maybe it's not a noun in english...

vaj bImujbej. mu'tlheghmeywIjDaq DIp 'oHba' mu' "sleep"'e', DIp pab pabmo' 
mu'vetlh. chaq DIp Hal 'oH wot'e', 'ach DaH wot DIp je 'oSlaHqu'.
It is definitely a noun in the sentences I gave, because it behaves as one 
grammatically. It may have originally been derived from the verb, but in 
modern English "sleep" can be a noun or a verb.

ja'taH:
>Most likely formed from the creation of a noun form... I can't really...
>Even though i speak english, i myself can't really.. Conceive sleep as
>an object...

Have you never said something like "I had a really long sleep last night", 
or do you believe that that's bad English? The fact that you can't conceive 
of "sleep" as a noun doesn't stop "sleep" from being, morphologically, a 
noun here. It takes the indefinite article "a", which is normally a morpheme 
restricted to nouns in English (you can't usually say *"a believe", for 
instance).

>Only verbs and adjatives... Sleep is not tangible, nor does it represent
>a value or another object. It represents a state of mind/body. Sleep is
>an inexistant object...

vaj chay' mu'mey {qech} "idea" je DIlo'laH? bIH vay''e' HotlaHbe'bogh vay', 
'ach DIp bIHqu' net tob.
Then what do you propose we do with the noun "idea" in English and the 
corresponding Klingon term {qech}? That is also a state of mind that doesn't 
represent something tangible, but it is absolutely, totally, 
incontrovertibly a noun in both English and Klingon.

jIja'taH:
>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".

mujang Shane MiQogh, ja':
>"i had a good sleep last night" dosn't represent a time...

poH 'oSbej. DIp 'oH je {Hogh}'e' {DIS}'e' je... DIS Hotla'be', 'ach DIp 
'oHtaH.
It does refer to a *period* of time. So do the true nouns {Hogh} "week" and 
{DIS} "year". You can't touch a year, but it's still a noun.

ja'taH:
>If anything represents a figure it's "good" not sleep... "I need to have a
>sleep" means "i need to perform the action of sleeping."

{pong vIghaj} 'oSchu' {jIHvaD pong nobpu' vay'}, 'ach DIp 'oHtaH {pong}'e'. 
motlh jatlhmeH latlh mIw tu'lu'.
"I have a name" means "someone has named me", too. But that doesn't stop 
"name" from being a noun. It comes back to this redundancy: there is almost 
always more than one way of saying something.

ja'taH:
>That's obvious... Fact is on the contrary, sleep as a noun only represents
>the action, while life is used as a noun so one could personify it...

mu'ghomDaq mu' "sleep" yISam. mu'ghomwIjDaq jIlaD <wot DIp je ghaj DIvI' Hol 
ngo''e'>: qaStaHvIS wa'SanID DISmey, DIvI' Hol DIp "sleep" tu'lu'.
If you look up "sleep" in any dictionary, you will see that that's not 
strictly correct; the Merriam Webster dictionary lists two distinct meanings 
of "sleep" as a noun.

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/sleep (Check definition 3a: "a period spent 
sleeping".)

And my dictionary of English states that "sleep" has been a noun in this 
fashion since Old English, a thousand years of history of the word.

>Klingon needs a noun of "action" before it needs a noun for sleep...

To extend the same argument, there may also be a noun form of the word 
{vang} "to act" that we don't know about. But if we don't know it by now, 
it's possible we'll never know it or that it doesn't exist.

>I could think of a verb that klingon dosn't have that would be useful, but
>would probably keep klingon unique if we didn't have it... And that verb
>would be "do". Such as "Do that of which i have asked you to do."

{rInmoH} and {ta'} both cover the verb "to do" perfectly well.

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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