[Tlhingan-hol] Type 5 on first noun

[lojmIttI'wI'nuv]

Let’s back up a step and look at the foundations of grammar in Klingon.

A lone verb can be a sentence. The prefix implies the number and gender of the subject and object. It’s all about the verbs.

If you want to be more specific in expressing meaning, the next most significant part of speech is the noun. Nouns require a relationship with the verb in order to be a part of the sentence. That relationship is revealed either by position (object or subject), or by a Type 5 noun suffix.

A noun phrase can stand in the place of a noun. One form of noun phrase is a noun-noun (genitive) construction. The link is revealed by position. The last noun in the sequence is the one with a relationship to the verb. That noun’s relationship to that verb is revealed by its position relative to the verb (object or subject), or by a Type 5 noun suffix.

So, if a noun has a Type 5 noun suffix, it is the noun with a relationship to the verb defined by that suffix. You can’t have a noun with a Type 5 suffix simultaneously having one relationship to the verb revealed by the Type 5 noun suffix, and also serving as part of a genitive noun-noun construction with a different noun that has its own independent relationship with that verb, defined by its position, or its own Type 5 noun suffix.

At that point, the gears gnash, and the clock stops ticking. Do this, and you break the grammar.

Type 5 noun suffixes link the nouns to VERBS. This breaks whatever relationship they might otherwise have with nouns following them.

It really is that simple.

Contrast this to the verb suffix {-meH}, which we are told can be used to make one verb modify a different verb (forming a dependent clause), or it can modify a noun (which has it’s own grammatical link to another verb). A verb with {-meH} can modify a noun or a verb.

A noun with a Type 5 suffix modifies a verb. It doesn’t modify anything else. It can’t. That’s not what Type 5 noun suffixes do.

Trees vs. chains? Okrand never talks about that. It helps to keep in mind that Klingon is all about the verbs, then nouns are added to give greater granularity and specificity of meaning, and the affixes and positioning establish the links between these nouns and verbs, and then we toss in some chuvmey for color.

Titles to stories, books, poems, and songs are a poor source for deriving the validity of grammatical rules. Consider Zardoz.

Okrand would probably be appalled if he knew the arguments that get started because of titles he creates.

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



> On Feb 11, 2016, at 3:10 PM, Brent Kesler <brent.of.all.people at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> It's kind of a moot point since I've given up on my theory, but I think I should clarify some of my argument.
> 
> 
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 2:07 PM, lojmIttI'wI'nuv <lojmitti7wi7nuv at gmail.com <mailto:lojmitti7wi7nuv at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 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 was using the term "compound noun" in a more generic sense of a large noun (or noun phrase) made of several smaller nouns--not specifically nouns that have been fused into a single word. I apologize for the imprecision. I sometimes jump into these debates in the heat of the moment when I don't have my copy of TKD handy.
>  
> 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. 
> 
> When I used the word "chain" I was specifically thinking of Markov chain grammars, and early attempt to describe syntax as linear chains of words, rather than branching tree structures. If you're assuming a hierarchy of membership, you're using a tree rather than a chain. You don't really hear about Markov chain grammars in linguistics anymore because they didn't really work well. I thought the focus on only putting Type 5 suffixes on the second noun resembled chain-like thinking rather than tree-like thinking--that's why I used that word.
> 
> I understand that different word orders make different meanings. That's a different question from whether the phrase is structured as a chain or a tree.
> 
> 
> bI'reng
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