tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Sep 14 10:37:37 2009

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Re: nom*i*nal*ize 2. to convert (an underlying clause) into a noun phrase

David Trimboli ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

Terrence Donnelly wrote:

> What's interesting about these is that these are different types of
> suffixes. From MO's description, it sounded like you couldn't use a
> naked verb plus {-ghach} because some sort of time or state was
> implied by {-ghach} that the naked verb didn't convey, so one had to
> use one of the "aspectual" suffixes, such as {-taH} or {-qa'}. But
> the only aspectual suffix in the above group is {-qa'}, and the
> others are more like modal suffixes.  So maybe the need for an
> intervening suffix is more of a formal requirement than something
> inherent in the meaning of {-ghach}.

I look at {-ghach} as a nominalizer that creates a new word stem. TKD 
says something like (I don't have it with me), "It is not known if all 
verbs can be nouns, but verbs with suffixes can never be nouns." In 
other words, it is looking at words like {quv} and {naD} and saying that 
they may be verbs that have become nouns, but the verbs {quvHa'} and 
{naDHa'} (for instance) cannot ever be considered nouns. Using {-ghach} 
lets you do exactly what you could do with {quv} and {naD}, but with 
suffixes attached as well. {quv} the verb became {quv} the noun,  but 
{quvHa'} the verb cannot become **{quvHa'} the noun, so you use {-ghach} 
to explicitly mark that that's what you're doing: {quvHa'ghach}.

In theory, there could be a noun *{tlhutlh}, but there isn't one, and we 
know this explicity from KGT. But the existence of {-ghach} still allows 
you to work with the verb as if it had a noun counterpart anyway, but 
only for *new* noun stems. *{tlhutlh} is not a noun, so **{tlhutlhghach} 
is not a valid noun. It's considered marked, because **{tlhutlhghach} 
would equal *{tlhutlh}, which doesn't exist. And if it did exist, you 
wouldn't need **{tlhutlhghach}. And since {quv} and {naD} both exist as 
nouns, you don't need **{quvghach} or **{naDghach}. So {-ghach} is only 
used where you are adding verb suffixes to create a new word stem.

-- 
SuStel
tlhIngan Hol MUSH
http://trimboli.name/mush

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