[979] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: epithets (taHqeq)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sat Jun 12 23:43:40 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>
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1993 19:09:31 PDT
In-Reply-To: "A.APPLEYARD@fs1.mt.umist.ac:uk:Xerox's message of Sat, 12 Jun 199
> For `taHqeq` <my> analyser comes up with:
>C:\LIT\KL>r
>[Klingon -> English autotranslater, version of 23 Apr 1993]
>Kl?taHqeq
>- S:$%^&_epithet*
>- V:be_at_negative_angle V:[practise|train|prepare]
>- V:be_at_negative_angle N:drill_mil
>- V:[continue|go_on|endure]* V:[practise|train|prepare]
>- V:[continue|go_on|endure]* N:drill_mil
I believe that the final four solutions are invalid, involving a verb
compounding with another verb or with a noun. Unless I have missed something,
such constructions are not allowed in the morphotactics of Klingon. Have I
missed something? If I'm right, then a morphological analyzer for Klingon
should not return these pseudo-solutions. I welcome correction.
Right now, we do know that "Compound nouns consist of two or three nouns in a
row" (TKD p. 19), and we know that these compounded nouns can include
nominalized verbs with the -wI' suffix (p. 20, 44). I suggested, in my first
HolQeD paper, that we should ask Okrand if three nouns is really the maximum
(he could test this easily on his informant). I would suspect that compounds
of more than three nouns might be rare, and harder for listeners to process,
but still technically well-formed. Only Okrand can tell us. I also suggested
that we should ask him about obvious compound words like jolpa' ("transport
room") that appear as separate entries in in the dictionary: do they count as
one or two nouns when forming compounds? It could be the case that the word
jolpa' is now rattled off so unconsciously that it is essentially treated as a
single word (compare Okrands's speculations about 'ejDo' being a compound
historically, p. 20). These questions actually make a difference in my own
analyzer, which currently allows only nouns, and currently only two or three of
them, to form valid compounds.
We also know that -ghach (p. 176) is another suffix, like -wI', that turns
verbs into nouns. So my analyzer does, for the time being, allow -ghach
nominalizations to form compounds like any other nouns. It would be wise to
check this assumption with Okrand.
Has Okrand answered any questions yet?
Ken Beesley
beesley.parc@xerox.com
