[Tlhingan-hol] Type 5 on first noun

[lojmIttI'wI'nuv]

First, I appreciate the work you put into this. It’s good to see people still delving into the grammar after all these years.

But I can’t quite buy into your expansion of the definition of a “compound noun”. Okrand seems to have come up with the term to describe single words that contain two or more nouns, like the example in TKD of {jolpa’}. That’s not just the occasional pair of nouns placed next to each other. I tend to think of compound nouns as associated nouns, perhaps in the past placed as a noun-noun construction, and over time fossilized to become a single noun.

I’ve never read this as license for us to make up our own compound nouns, as much as an explanation for why the vocabulary already has nouns that appear to be composed of multiple nouns mashed together. His English example “earthworm” is a fine example. Perhaps there was a day when we used separated words “earth worm” to differentiate the type of worm that burrows through the dirt from those that live in dead meat or intestines, or subcutaneous worms, or worms in vegetables or flowers, etc. But it’s been a very long time since people have said “dirt worm”, which is exactly as meaningful as “earth worm” as a pair of words. But “earthworm” has a reliable meaning that is more specific and definite than the simple pair of words together.

As for your aversion to considering noun-noun-noun as a “chain”, I don’t have a problem with it. Regardless of the placement of parenthesis, there is a hierarchy of membership in terms of the association between the nouns in a noun-noun construction. There’s a difference between a captain’s sword and a sword’s captain. There’s a difference between a ship’s captain and a captain’s ship. 

Noun-noun-noun is not so different from a ship’s captain’s sword, which is different from a ship’s sword’s captain or a sword’s ship’s captain. The order of the words makes all the earlier nouns descriptor’s of the last noun, in Klingon or English, and since it’s that last noun that has a grammatical role in the sentence, that’s the one that reveal’s that role with a Type 5 noun suffix.

Let me reveal what I suspect is the reason for this rule:

yaH Qu’mo’ HoD DujDaq HoD no’vo' SuvI’ yaSvaD taj nob HoD.

There’s nothing really confusing about this sentence because with this rule, we know that the Type 5 noun suffixes each tell you what each noun is doing that has a Type 5 suffix, and we know that those that don’t are nouns that tell us something about the nouns that do. 

yaH Qu’mo’ — {yaH} does not have a grammatical function in the larger sentence. It is the first noun of the noun noun construction. It tells you what mission. It’s the officer’s mission. The mission is the reason the main action takes place. The officer is not the reason the action takes place. The officer merely helps you identify what mission is the reason for the action.

HoD DujDaq — {HoD} does not have a grammatical function in the larger sentence. The location is that of the captain’s ship. The action happens on the ship. The action doesn’t happen on or at the captain. The captain merely identifies which ship the action occurs on.

HoD no’vo’ — The sword is not from the captain. The sword is from the captain’s ancestors. The captain identifies the ancestors, since there are so many to choose from…

SuvwI’ yaSvaD — The sword is given to the warrior’s officer. It’s not given the warrior. The warrior merely helps to describe or identify the officer.

taj nob HoD. — The captain gives a sword.

We can make up lots of examples like this, and use noun-noun-noun constructions if you like, but always the single noun at the end of the list is the one that is being described or identified by the previous ones, and that’s the only one that has a grammatical function in the sentence that needs to be identified with a Type 5 noun suffix.

The title we’ve been given {QamchIyDaq ‘uQ’a'} is not problematic because it is not a sentence. QamchIyDaq is a place and {‘uQ’a’} is a thing at that place. What is the problem? Since there is no verb, there is no confusion over grammatical function in the sentence. It would be perfectly fine as a sentence, as in:

QamchIyDaq ‘uQ’a’ vISop.

Nobody would interpret {QamchIyDaq ‘uQ’a’} as a noun-noun construction in that sentence. They’d see {QamchIyDaq} as a locative, and {‘uQ’a’} as a direct object of {Sop}.

I completely agree that this is not a noun-noun construction with a Type 5 suffix on the first noun. It would be gibberish if it were. It’s not that it violates the rule. It DOESN’T violate the rule because it’s not a noun-noun construction. It’s just two nouns, not in a sentence. The whole reason for a noun-noun grammatical construction as described in TKD is to tell you that the last noun in the series has a grammatical function in the surrounding sentence, while the earlier nouns in the list merely describe or identify the last noun.

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



> On Feb 10, 2016, at 11:41 AM, Brent Kesler <brent.of.all.people at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 7:21 PM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com <mailto:de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> This is what TKD says:
> <When the noun-noun construction is used, only the second noun can
> take syntactic suffixes (Type 5). Both nouns, however, may take
> suffixes of the other four types.>
> 
> 
> I have to wonder if we're reading this rule a little too literally. I've always read it as "This is how you fit a compound noun into a larger phrase: put the Type 5 suffix at the end of the compound noun." 
> 
> Let me put it this way: what do we do if we have a noun-noun-noun construction?
> 
> 1. Meet me at this city's Hall of Heroes.
>     vengvam Subpu' vaSDaq HIghom.
>  
> 
> I think that's a perfectly acceptable sentence. If someone objected, "TKD only permits two-noun constructions; three-noun constructions are off limits," I'd think they were misreading the rule. If someone told me, "No, {-Daq} has to go on {Subpu'}, since {Subpu'} is the second noun," I'd think that's an outright bizarre interpretation.
> 
> So if we accept three-noun constructions, we have to figure out how to apply the two-noun rule for Type 5 suffixes. The simple answer is that we shouldn't think of the phrase {vengvam Subpu' vaS} as a chain of three nouns. It really is a noun-noun construction, but the second noun is a compound noun. Once two nouns join together in a noun-noun construction, that noun-noun construction can be treated as a single noun that can fit into another noun-noun construction.
> 
> 2. vengvam Subpu' vaS --> (vengvam (Subpu' vaS))
> 
> 
> A noun-noun construction can also be the first noun in the larger noun-noun construction.
> 
> 3. The ship captain's sword: Duj HoD yan --> ((Duj HoD) yan)
> 
> 
> If we apply a Type 5 suffix to either Example 2 or Example 3, we put it on the third word, but that doesn't violate the rule, because the third word is just part of the second noun, which can be simple or compound.
> 
> From this line of reasoning, we get a production rule for noun phrases:
> 
>    NP --> N or (N NP) or (NP N)
> 
> In this rule, an noun phrase (NP) has at most two parts: a noun (N) and another noun phrase. (I'm ignoring adjectivial verbs for now.) Since the rule is recursive, it can produce an arbitrarily long chain of nouns.
> 
> If we recast the Type 5 rule as "A Type 5 suffix can only go on the second element of a noun phrase", and we can have multiple noun phrases embedded within a larger noun phrase, then phrases like {QamchIyDaq 'uQ'a'} fit the rule. I think the argument becomes clearer in this example:
> 
> 4. The Feast at the Hall of Heroes
>    Subpu' vaSDaq 'uQ'a'
> 
> Here, the noun-noun construction {Subpu' vaS} takes a Type 5 suffix on its second noun. This example fits both MO's original formulation and my re-interpretation!
> 
> My re-interpretation of the rule even fits how we handle nouns with adjectivial verbs:
> 
>    NP --> N Va
> 
> Since we put {-Daq} at the end of the noun phrase, the rule fits how we handle nouns with adjectivial verbs (Va):
> 
> 5. In the big hall
>    vaS tInDaq
> 
> I think this is a fair interpretation of MO's intent. It fits canon and at least the spirit of the rule as stated in TKD.
> 
> TKD is a grammatical sketch, not a comprehensive description. It was written in 1985 as a quick and dirty guide for non-linguists, so sometimes MO uses vague and imprecise hints rather than formal rules. I know we have to be careful about applying that excuse to every inconsistency we find, but I think we have strong line of reasoning to use it in this case.
> 
> 
> Even though I accept {QamchIyDaq 'uQ'a'} as grammatical, I don't buy this argument:
> 
> Since {-Daq} is on the first noun in these pairs, if we go by the
> definition in TKD, they are not noun-noun constructions (in the sense
> defined in TKD 3.4).
> 
> On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 8:03 PM, Robyn Stewart <robyn at flyingstart.ca <mailto:robyn at flyingstart.ca>> wrote:
> Definitely not a noun-noun construction. If the first noun in an N-N could carry a type-5 it would render much of our corpus unintelligible. The type five is like a marker in conversation that  the noun phrase is over.
> 
>  
> I think this is begging the question. It's saying, "This phrase breaks the rules, but we keep using it, so it must not break the rules." It exempts {QamchIyDaq 'uQ'a'} from the rule without explaining why it's grammatical. My interpretation does both.
> 
> 
> bI'reng
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