tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Oct 19 18:16:51 2007
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Re: verb + verb "compound" nouns?
Also note that since we're really just phonetically recording a
spoken language by use of a romanized alphabet that Klingons don't
use, and we don't really know how Klingon is written by Klingons, we
can't know for sure whether a pair of nouns really are one compound
noun or just a pair of nouns. It's somewhat arbitrary that we choose
to treat two nouns as one sometimes or keep them separated other times.
A compound noun in Klingon is really just a way of writing two nouns
that are commonly thought of as a single word. That's why there's no
specific rule telling us how to make up new compound nouns. Likely,
this is not a grammatical feature. It's just that certain pairs of
nouns eventually become accepted by the culture as if they were a
single word.
Doq
On Oct 17, 2007, at 6:41 PM, Robyn Stewart wrote:
> Note that the "other complex nouns" may be compounds of words that
> used to be nouns, but aren't anymore.
>
> At 06:20 PM 10/17/2007, you wrote:
>> On Oct 17, 2007, at 3:59 PM, Steven Boozer wrote:
>>
>>>> For that matter, how is {Doghjey} a "compound noun" in the first
>>>> place, since neither of its parts is a noun?
>>>
>>> If you're quibbling over that fact that neither of its components
>>> are nouns, what then would you call it?
>>
>> I don't think "quibbling" is an appropriate term for applying the
>> definitions given in The Klingon Dictionary.
>>
>> TKD 3.2.1. Compound nouns
>>
>> Compound nouns consist of two or three nouns in a row, much
>> like English "earthworm" ("earth" plus "worm") or "password"
>> ("pass" plus "word"). For example, {jolpa'} "transport room"
>> consists of {jol} "transport beam" plus {pa'} "room".
>>
>> As for {Doghjey}, I'd call it the same thing TKD 3.2 calls it: a
>> complex noun. Since it's neither a compound noun nor a verb plus {-
>> wI'} (or {-ghach}), it falls under TKD 3.2.3. Other complex nouns.
>>
>> -- ghunchu'wI'
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