[Tlhingan-hol] DIp moj'a' wot pagh wot moj'a' DIp?

[Bellerophon, modeler]

Trick question. Both apparently, and sometimes neither.

Alan Anderson said I was the first to suggest a null nominalizer. I've
always thought that some words that can function as both nouns and verbs
had to start out as verbs. Klingons are very action oriented, so a meaning
is more likely to find its first expression as a verb. Klingon terseness
tends to result in the shortest form that avoids ambiguity. A Klingon wants
to say something and needs a noun. Being more interested in brevity than
correctness, he simply appropriates a verb. (He is also likely to be a
particularly fierce Klingon who will kill anyone who dares to correct him.
His ferocity conveys high status, so the new usage catches on.) Hence, I
conceived of a null nominalizer.

Of course the process could work both ways, and some verbs could begin as
nouns. And the process could be more convoluted than that. Even -wI'
constructions (perhaps even ones where -wI' was the noun suffix) could
conceivably result in verbs that are back-formations (Degh, for instance?),
especially if engineers are allowed to speak. Engineers attempting to speak
English coined the appalling word "orientate."

Back to identical noun/verb pairs, I chose some examples of every
possibility I could think of.

In the case of nouns for actions like "wem" (violation) or for the content
of an action like "qeS" (advice), it seems likely to me that the verb came
first and was nominalized. The very idea of the action of violation (wem)
only exists because of the act of violating (wem). Advice is the
particulars of advising, and  the verb "qeS" could have arisen as a short
way to say "qeS nob." But advice is a recommended course of action, and it
isn't considered advice until someone recommends it.

A noun like "yoD" (shield) stands for a concrete object in hand-to-hand
combat, and after that a defensive system on a ship, just as in English. It
seems unlikely that the verb would come first. (Imagine some Klingon
saying, "yoD'eghnIS jIH, 'ach wej yoD 'oghlu'!") The verb "yoD" means to
use the object for its intended purpose (although perhaps it can also be
used as a synonym for "Qan", and perhaps "yoD" once simply meant protect).

There are also words like "SoD" (flood), for which it seems like a toss-up
which came first. Our English word comes ultimately from an Indo-European
verb meaning "to flow," but Klingon doesn't seem to offer clues about SoD.

Then there are noun/verb pairs like "SoQ" (speech/be closed), where there
seems to be no connection between the two, but there could be something in
the etymology.

I'm curious to see what others make of this. Klingons and Klingonists
resort to various expedients to fill gaps in the vocabulary. Those of
Klingonists often do not survive contact with Maltz, but that may be
preferable to how such matters would be settled between Klingons .

~'eD
-- 
My modeling blog:          http://bellerophon-modeler.blogspot.com/
My other modeling blog:  http://bellerophon.blog.com/
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