[550] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: De-verbal nouns
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Tue Apr 13 20:05:21 1993
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Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: Ken_Beesley.PARC@xerox.com
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Cc: beesley.parc@xerox.com
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1993 15:32:36 PDT
In-Reply-To: "krankor@codex.prds.cdx.mot:com:Xerox's message of Mon, 12 Apr 199
[Please don't anyone take me too seriously. I hate smileys, and you can't hear
me chuckling. I find this whole Klingon business extremely amusing.]
Krankor:
>>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.<<
We may have to agree to disagree on this point. As I read the situation, even
after your private communication with Okrand, the existence of currently
undocumented V->N zero derivations is suspected but still "unknown." We can
"often" zero-derive a noun from a verb. So that still means that every
extrapolation is still a step into the void. For any particular extrapolated
example, we just don't know if it really exists.
Even from the conservative point of view, it's more than valid to TRY them, but
not on the public. The linguist's and lexicographer's job is to try them out
on native informants and see what flies. And then publish the results.
Someone with access to Okrand might, for example, periodically prepare a list
of 100 new lexical entries (e.g. suspected V->N zero derivations, or just plain
nouns or verbs that someone needed) and ask him to try them out on his
informant. If he and his informant give their blessing, AND the list is
published so that it is available to all Klingonists, then it becomes part of
the language. Perhaps Okrand could give Krankor, or some other Klingonist,
access to the informant so that he could bestow the necessary blessings.
>>[Okrand] 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.<<
Sorry, I can't see how the statement that you never get N->V zero derivations
affects the current issue at all. In English, of course, N->V is common:
"table" -> "to table a motion"; "balloon" -> "to balloon (up)"; "head" -> "to
head (a soccer ball)"; "spoon" -> "to spoon yoghurt from the cup", etc.
>>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.<<
The current Klingon description, as commendable as it is, is inadequate all
around, lexically, morphologically, and syntactically, for serious composition.
Okrand himself states that "[t]he grammatical sketch is intended to be an
outline of Klingon grammar, not a complete description." TKD represents only
the "initial results" of his work. We should perhaps wait for the Encyclopedia
before getting too serious about any of this. (We have now purchased over
250,000 copies of the dictionary, and over 50,000 copies of the audio tape, so
even the most cynical among us should expect some followup soon.)
Before Zamenhof loosed Esperanto on the world, he spent quite a bit of time and
energy actually using it in translation and original composition, to make sure
that it was viable. We, unfortunately, do not have any extended Klingon texts
that would guide us and push the linguistic envelope. I hope that Pocket Books
will soon find the collected Klingon Heroic Myths, or whatever, and pass them
along to us.
We also need a responsive Klingon Academy.
>>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.<<
Here I must disagree completely. I chose the examples at random, just starting
at the beginning of the lexicon, and it's fairly obvious to me that any
particular example might go one of several ways--ways that affect the usage and
translation. If the nominalization is concrete and countable, then you can
pluralize it. If the nominalization is human, then you get different plurals
and possessives. If the nominalization is abstract, other rules may apply.
The "expected" meaning is a bit of a chimera.
>>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. <<
Not irregular. Idiosyncratic. Derivational morphological processes are
notoriously idiosyncratic in natural language. Always messy and full of
exceptions. When the verb boQ was zero-derived into a noun, it took one of the
many possible semantic readings that are related to the verbal notion. In
practice, what probably happened was that some sufficiently influential Klingon
used the word in that particular way, meaning "aide," and it just happened to
catch on, and eventually that usage supported inclusion in the lexicon.
Perhaps the native Klingon prescriptive grammarians are still arguing about the
propriety of that one, much as some of our English prescriptive grammarians
argue about the use of "impact" and "obsolete" as verbs ("This new chip
obsoletes everyting else on the market."). You remember how Al Haig was
criticized for verbing his nouns and nouning his verbs?
So, for the time being, I will continue to argue that for any known Klingon
verb
1. A zero-derived noun may or may not exist (all you can do is ask a native).
and
2. If a zero-derived noun does exist, or even if every verb supports a
zero-derived noun, you still have to ask what the noun means (out of several
reasonable possibilities). So you still need overt lexical entries in order to
use such derived nouns correctly.
Try the following examples--your job is to guess what the corresponding
zero-derived noun means:
First I'll recap the first few examples from the lexicon:
bach shoot (v)
bel be_pleased (v)
bep complain/object/gripe (v)
boQ assist (v)
buv classify (v)
chav achieve (v)
choH alter/change (v)
choS desert (v)
Here are the ways that these particular examples go:
bach shot [a concrete act or incidence of
shooting, not abstract shooting or marksmanship, not a gunner or "good shot";
so you would pluralize with -mey]
bel pleasure [abstract or concrete]
bep agony [N.B. not just a complaint, or
complaining, an objection or a gripe, or griping, but "agony"; can you
pluralize "pleasure" and "agony" in Klingon, or do massy, abstract things
resist pluralization?]
boQ aide [agentive nominalization, one who
assists; probably pluralizes with -pu']
buv classification [abstract or concrete]
chav achievement [abstract or concrete]
choH change [abstract or concrete]
choS twilight [could be a coincidental pair, or maybe the sun
deserts us at twilight]
Now try to guess the meanings of the nouns that correspond to these verbs,
writing them down (no fair peeking at the answers below). I have avoided a
number of pairs that could be accidental homophones.
Daw' revolt (v)
Duy' be_defective (v)
ghItlh write (v)
HeS commit a crime (v)
Hotlh project, put on (screen) (v)
Hurgh be_dark (v)
jol beam (aboard) (v)
lam be dirty (v)
leng roam/travel/rove (v)
mol bury (v)
nov be foreign, alien (v)
Sev contain (an enemy) (v)
tlhIl mine (v)
pab follow (rules) (v)
Answers:
Daw' revolution [abstract or concrete]
Duy' defect [abstract or concrete]
ghItlh manuscript [a product of writing, not abstract writing]
HeS crime [abstract or concrete]
Hotlh scan [not projection]
Hurgh pickle (cucumber) [perhaps a coincidence, unless Klingon pickling
darkens the product]
jol transport beam [the medium or tool for beaming aboard, not
beaming per se]
lam dirt [ not dirtiness or uncleanliness but just dirt]
leng trip/voyage [a particular one apparently, not traveling or
roaming in general]
mol grave [place of burial, not interment or burial per se]
nov alien, foreigner [one who is foreign, not foreignness; cf. boQ]
Sev bandage
tlhIl mineral
pab grammar
[Okrand's alleged factoid notwithstanding, examples like lam, tlhIl, and mol
feel like N->V.]
Why doesn't ghItlh (n) mean "writing" or "writing place" or "writer"? Why
doesn't tlhIl (n) mean "mining" [abstract or concrete] or even a "mine" [place
where mining is done] or "miner"? Why doesn't pab (n) mean something like
"obedience". Why ask why? That's just the way it is. Idiosyncratic.
>>I suppose we're going to have to
ultimately take some official position on this highly debatable issue.<<
If Klingon were a made-up language and if we had the authority to pontificate,
then yes.
Ken Beesley
