[582] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: nouns/verbs cont.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Fri Apr 16 17:09:50 1993
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
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Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
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>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1993 10:44:46 PDT
In-Reply-To: "krankor@codex.prds.cdx.mot:com:Xerox's message of Wed, 14 Apr 199
[I think that this will be my final message, for the time being, on this
subject.]
Krankor:
>>Ken's points about how it is not always clear what the meaning would be on a
presumed noun-from-verb are, of course, accurate. On the other hand, I did
pretty well on his test (I think Hurgh is just a coincidence :). But he has
not addressed what, to me, is a key point (unless I missed it, which is possibl
e):<<
>>How is this lack of certainty about the precise meaning of a derived noun any
different than the exact same uncertainty of meaning that arrises when one adds
-ghach to a verb?<<
I will first address what I take to be the "key point" and then go on to talk
about uncertainty of meaning. I will argue that the vagueness of meaning in
-ghach and the uncertainty of meaning in zero derivations are not the same at
all.
Key point:
The key point for me has always been the matter of morphological
well-formedness: for any given string of letters, is it a Kosher Klingon word
or is it not? This question comes down to Earth in my Klingon analyzer
program, which is designed to accept, and return an analysis for, any valid
Klingon word; and it should reject all invalid words. Underrecognition and
overrecognition are errors that have to be fixed in my formal morphological
description.
The Type 9 verbal suffix -ghach is documented and productive, as best I can
tell, so the program is written to accept -ghach formations. The zero
derivation of noun roots from verb roots, on the other hand, is not currently
known to be productive. So, based on the verbal root "wuq" (to decide), the
program currently accepts wuqghach as a valid nominalization, whatever that
might mean, perhaps something like "decision," for which we do not currently
have a translation. There is no current lexicon entry with "wuq" as a noun.
It may well be the case in Klingon that wuq can also function as a noun,
allowing forms like ?wuqmeymajmo' (because of our decisions), but we won't know
until we get further official clarification. Even Okrand is unsure. So for
the time being I have judged ?wuqmeymajmo' and similar examples to be
unsupported; they have noun suffixes on a root that is not known to be a noun.
Uncertainty (vagueness) of meaning:
We have only a couple of examples to illustrate what -ghach formations mean;
perhaps somebody could scan the entire available corpus for examples and write
a short paper for HolQeD? The few examples I see feel like the English -ness
or -ity or -ation. -ghach contrasts with the -wI' nominalizer, another Type 9
suffix, so it is highly unlikely that -ghach nominalizations could have an
agentive "one-who-<verb>s" meaning, as in zero-derived examples such as boQ (v
"assist") and boQ (n "aide") and nov (v "be foreign") and nov (n "foreigner").
I would guess that boQghach would mean "assistance" and novghach "foreignness."
It also seems unlikely that -ghach could carry meanings like "place of" as in
the zero-derived pair mol (v "to bury") and mol (n "grave").
So, the meaning of -ghach may be a bit vague, like the English -ness, but its
vagueness would not seem to extend to cover the range of meanings seen in zero
derivations. Any -ghach formation would appear to be a bit vague, but in a
limited sort of way; i.e. any -ghach formation might mean a few things, but
there are some things that it obviously doesn't mean.
Even more to the point, individual zero-derived V->N roots do not appear to be
vague or uncertain in their meanings at all. Rather, the meaning of an
individual zero-derived noun is quite specific, but that specific meaning is
idiosyncratically related to the meaning of the original verb. E.g. mol (n)
and boQ (n) are not vague; on the contrary. In the process of becoming
nominalized they took on specific meanings chosen, probably by accident, from a
whole raft of semantic possibilities related to their underlying nouns.
The processes of -ghach derivation and zero derivation are therefore, in my
view, quite different. This situation would be completely compatible with the
theory that -ghach is productive but that zero-derivation is unproductive and
idiosyncratic.
Ken Beesley
