[539] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: De-verbal nouns
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon Apr 12 18:42:56 1993
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Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: Captain Krankor <krankor@codex.prds.cdx.mot.com>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 93 15:04:45 -0400
Ken makes some good points about this deverbal noun business.
His throwing my own words back at me is tough to argue against {{:-).
I still feel, though, that, if we take the strictest possible approach
and disallow ANY extrapolation, then we have nullified Okrand's remarks
on the subject. For instance, when I talked to him, he went out of his way
to note that you can often derive a noun from a verb, but NEVER the other
way around. Are we just to ignore all this? I don't know. This whole
topic is perhaps the vaguest he's ever given us, and one certainly can't
argue with anyone who says that therefore we must take the strictest
interpretation. It was my hope to avoid the 'totally confusing other
Klingonists' (I like that word {{:-) problem by always striving to have
some kind of noun suffix on such a derived noun, so that the usage would
be explicit. But I must confess that even then I have used such derivitives
only rarely, and with some reluctance. But sometimes, when your back is
against the wall and there's no other way to say what you want... well, it's
a tough call. And it should be noted that the other way out-- using -ghach on
a simple verb-- is just as tentative and unsupported.
Ken's examples are most interesting. I do think on most of them he is being
overly 'picky' about the exact semantic relationship between the verb and
the noun. While they don't follow an extremely precise rule, they do for the
most part express the 'expected' meaning, i.e., the noun meaning one would
expect when given the verb. This 'expected' meaning is admittedly subjective
and unscientific, but if you look at it, it is no more or less so than the
meaning produced by adding -ghach. That is, it does not say anywhere that
adding -ghach to a verb yields the noun that denotes the physical occurence
of the verb vs. the abstract quality of the verb. It just says it gives you
the analogous noun, which presumably means the-noun-you'd-expect-it-to-be.
I see no reason not to apply the same criterion (or lack thereof) to derived
verbal nouns.
However, (and this is a big however), one of his examples *is* an excellent
counter-example. There's no way around the fact that boQ's noun meaning as
"aide" is clearly irregular. We really would have expected it to be
"assistance", with "aide" being boQwI'. It would seem that to get "assistance"
,
it would have to be boQghach. This certainly is strong ammunition for his
position that we just don't have enough info to proceed.
So, ok, what do the rest of you think? I suppose we're going to have to
ultimately take some official position on this highly debatable issue. I
completely respect Ken's opinion on this one and could be persuaded to it.
What's the concensus?
--Krankor
