tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 01 08:29:21 2008

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Re: Klingon WOTD: ngIp (verb)

Rohan Fenwick ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

jIDachqa'taHmo' jIQoS. latlh Qu'mey potlh vIrInnISmoH.
My apologies for my again-extended absence; other matters (viz.
university and continuing physiotherapy) have been of more
importance lately.
 
jatlh Sangqar:
> Here is a quote from a former BG:
I was the said BG.
 
jIjatlh 'e' ja' Sangqar:
> ---start quote--->> Not necessarily. IIRC the noun-noun construction is not only
> limited to possessive constructions, but may be used for all types
> of genitives, including what would be translated as an apposition
> in English: "man spouse"; "woman doctor"; "food fight". We have
> the parallel canon term {peQ chem} "magnetic field" (i.e. of all
> the different fields there are, it's the one pertaining to
> magnetism). The lack of adjectives in Klingon for "male" and
> "magnetic" means that this is the simplest way to do this
> sort of construction. {loD nal} *could* mean "man's spouse", but
> it doesn't necessarily have to.jang Doq, ja':
> I don't find the word {nal} in my word list.
 
No, but it's one of the most common bound morphemes in Klingon.
 
> Likely, it is not a word,
 
I never said {nal} is a word. I did hypothesise that it might have
*been* a word, though, a reasonable enough proposal considering
that the original discussion was about etymology in the first place.
 
> and it doesn't work to peel away a portion of a pollysyllabic noun
> and treat it like an independent noun for any kind of useful
> discussion.
 
Except in etymology, no? The original discussion Sangqar quoted
(which was probably two years or more ago now, since that's when
I was BG) was, IIRC, about how the term {loDnal} could have come
into being; someone asked why {loDnal} meant "husband" (i.e.
"man spouse", assuming the bound element {-nal} to carry the
meaning of "spouse" or "related by marriage", which seems pretty
clear) and not "wife" (i.e. "man's spouse"). I never cited {loDnal}
(or *{loD nal}, for that matter) as canon evidence for anything.
Rather, it was {peQ chem} that I was using as canon evidence to
interpret the origin of {loDnal}.
 
Therefore, forget {loDnal}/*{loD nal}. It has nothing to contribute
to the topic you and Sangqar are discussing, and nor did I ever
intend it to.
>BG or not, that could have been handled better,
 
I take exception to that. Perhaps it's due to the lack of context for
the quote, but you misunderstood what I had tried to say (and
further, you dodged the point Sangqar made by arguing about
the essentially irrelevant *{loD nal} and ignoring the indisputably
canon example {peQ chem}).
 
>and likely is not a shining moment of insight to hang onto to
>improve your understanding of the language.
 
I continue to stand behind what I said, and I would explain it in
exactly the same way again. {peQ chem} was and remains the
relevant canon in my original message, not {loDnal}/*{loD nal}.
 
>It is true that noun-noun extends farther than
>putting an apostrophe "s" after the first noun. Sometimes it
>translates a little better if you reverse the order of the nouns and
>insert the word "of" between them when you translate them.
>"Fight of food" makes more sense than "food's fight", for instance.
 
Or even "food fight", maybe? Parallelling "other language"? The
canon phrase {peQ chem} (literally "magnetism field") paves the
way to {latlh Hol} "other language, other-one language".
ghunchu'wI' has already pointed out the additional parallelism with
{Hoch} "all".
 
Now, on to other matters.
 
jatlhtaH Sangqar:
>I was trying to point out that I was not mistakenly using
>{-ghach} on a naked verb - I was doing it intentionally.
 
jatlhtaH Doq:
>I continue to be touchy about using {-ghach} on bare verbs. I
>see it as less incorrect than lazy.
 
wa' DoS wIqIp. {-ghach} on a bare verb is very highly marked -
intentional or not, there's nothing that's especially marked about
"stealing" and "borrowing". I don't see why {nIHtaHghach}
"theft" (as a process, to be distinguished from {nIHpu'ghach}
"theft" as a single event) and {ngIptaHghach} "borrowing" aren't
perfectly reasonable terms to translate the English "theft" and
"borrowing" in this context. Okrand has already said (in HQ3.3) that
an aspectual suffix plus {-ghach} in Klingon isn't as emphatic
as a literal English translation makes out:
 
"I personally have never heard a Klingon say {tlhutlhghach}. On the
other hand, throw in the {­taH} as we were saying earlier and you
have {tlhutlhtaHghach}, which means "ongoing drinking" or the
"process of continuing to drink", which is just fine but the English
translation overemphasizes the "continuing" part. Because in English
it's a separate word or phrase as opposed to just a little suffix like it
is in Klingon. So as a result of the translation it takes on a little
more oomph than it has." (HQ3.3, p.11)
 
So if a language borrows words from another language, it could be said to be engaged in {ngIptaHghach} (or {nIHtaHghach}, if you prefer), a continuing process. If it borrows a specific word, it could be said to have committed a {ngIppu'ghach}, a single specific act.QeS 'utlh tlhIngan Hol yejHaD pab po'wI'(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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