[Tlhingan-hol] Sunlight and Starlight

[Rohan Fenwick]

ghItlhpu' 'eD, jatlh:
> I'm no canon authority, but I've noticed other compound words that
> strongly imply additional vocabulary.
> Klingons may not make a fetish of logic, but they don't abandon
> it completely like humans.

jang SuStel, jatlh: 
> Languages are usually logical, but often the logic of language is not 
> obvious. The details are usually buried in history.
> 
> Perhaps there once was a noun *{wov} that meant "light," and that noun 
> formed genitive constructions like *{maS wov}, *{jul wov}, and *{Hov 
> wov}.

And it doesn't even need to have been a genitive construction. Formally {maS wov} "bright moon" would behave in most ways the same as a noun-noun construction, and we do have a number of other disyllabic nouns that have arisen from noun-adjectival constructs:

tajtIq "a type of knife" < taj tIq
bIQtIq "river" < bIQ tIq
naghboch "gemstone" < nagh boch
naHlet "nut" < naH let
naHjej "thistle" < naH jej
mu'tay' "vocabulary" < mu' tay'
Hovtay' "star system" < Hov tay'
maQmIgh "evil omen" < maQ mIgh

QeS
 		 	   		  
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