[239] in tlhIngan-Hol
Question for the Grammarian about nominalization.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon Mar 23 15:19:37 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: Allan C. Wechsler <ACW@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1992 13:50-0500
In-Reply-To: <9202270900.AA09874@ima.ima.isc.com>
[I've had the devil's own time getting mail through to tlhIngan-Hol. If
this access path works, expect a small spate of messages in the near
future, some not quite so topical as they were once.]
Recently I've seen a couple of uses of -ghach that seemed unwarranted to
me. I don't remember the writers, but at least two people have done
this. One example was <lobghach>, clearly intended to mean "obedience",
from <lob> "obey", and another was <yu'ghach>, intended as "question"
(but miscontruable as "interrogation (session)"). My question is, can
-ghach be used with noncompound (stem) verbs? P. 176 of the second
edition of TKD, section 4.2.9a, is the place where O. talks about this.
IMHO, this leaves us in the lurch with respect to verbs like <lob>.
Obviously O. never heard a Klingon use the bare stem <lob> to mean
"obedience", or he would have given it as a second meaning. On the
other hand, this could be an accidental gap in the data.
O. implies that it is /possible/ (but not proven) that /all/ stem verbs
can be implicitly nominalized, without a suffix. On the other hand, if
some stems /cannot/ be nominalized, we have no idea whether -ghach can
be used with these stems. If it /can't/, there would be no way to
nominalize these verbs except using expressions like <moch loblu'dI'
lunaD> "they approve when someone obeys a superior".
Does the Grammarian give us license to assume that all stem verbs can be
implicitly nominalized? Does he approve of nouns like <lobghach>?
