[Tlhingan-hol] emphasizing noun suffixes

[André Müller]

But then you are saying that nouns would work differently from verbs in
Klingon. We know that in Klingon verbs the suffixes do not necessarily
describe "everything to the left of it", {-nIS} goes to slot 2 and means
'need to', {-laH} goes to slot 5 and means 'be able to', but {jIlaDnISlaH}
can still mean 'I need to be able to read' and not (necessarily) 'I am able
to need to read', which is a possible interpretation, but simply doesn't
make much sense, semantically. So in verbs, suffixes mainly refer back to
the verb in general. Rovers are an exception, their scopus is on whatever
comes left to them.

I don't see a reason why nouns should work differently in Klingon.
{jaghpu'na'} means that the concept ENEMY is modified to mean plurality and
definiteness. So it's more than one enemy, and they're definite. The {-na'}
could refer to the enemy-ness alone. So {jaghpu'na'} can mean specifiy that
it's definitely sure that we're talking about someone hostile, but it might
not be as sure that it's many of them. {jaghpu'na'} only confirms with
certainty that it's enemies, not necessarily that they are many.

In short: It's not true that non-rover suffixes say something about all
that comes before them.

I was going to say that all non-rover suffixes refer just back to the
original verb or noun stem, but that might not be true either.

- André


2014-06-25 15:11 GMT+02:00 SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name>:

> On 6/25/2014 5:39 AM, Lieven wrote:
>
>> The word {jaghpu'na'} could mean "definitely enemies" (that is, there's
>> no question that those people you're talking about are enemies and not
>> friends or neutral parties or whatever), but, in the proper context, it
>> could also mean "definitely (several or a lot of) enemies," focusing on
>> the group or plurality.
>>
>
> {-na'} is a confirmation that everything to the left of it accurately
> describes the thing. This includes any plural suffix. {jaghpu'na'} "the
> word {jaghpu'} is definitely the correct word for this concept" confirms
> that the {-pu'} belongs. In cases where there's no need to confirm that
> {jagh} is the right noun, but where the difference between {wa' jagh} and
> {jaghpu'} is in question, {jaghpu'na'} will obviously have the effect of
> confirming the questionable {-pu'} part.
>
> --
> SuStel
> http://www.trimboli.name/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tlhingan-hol mailing list
> Tlhingan-hol at kli.org
> http://mail.kli.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol/attachments/20140625/a6b92e40/attachment-0001.html>