[tlhIngan Hol] Is the {telDaq wovmoHwI'} legal ?

[SuStel]

On 12/4/2016 12:18 PM, Alan Anderson wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 4, 2016 at 11:50 AM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name 
> <mailto:sustel at trimboli.name>> wrote:
>
>     But then it really behooves you to explain why Okrand didn't just
>     go with *tel wovmoHwI'.*
>
> {tel wovmoHwI'} would sound like it was brightening the wing. That's 
> not what wing lights do. There are hull spotlights on the Enterprise 
> (see 
> http://showcase.netins.net/web/marc111creations/PL_Enterprise_Refit_WIP_1_files/themotionpicture394.jpg 
> ), but not on a Bird of Prey.

/Wing-location lights/ sounds like they're brightening the wing's 
location. What are wing-location lights? I don't have the poster and I 
can find no high-resolution images. Are they navigation lights?

The possibilities here include: Okrand was thinking /lights on the 
wings/ and put a type 5 suffix on the first noun, forgetting or ignoring 
the rule; or Okrand was thinking /wing-location lights,/ which I still 
don't understand.

Let's suppose you have a pistol with lights on it. You want to label 
them. The word for /pistol/ is *HIch.* The word for /light/ is 
*wovmoHwI'.* So /pistol lights/ is *HIch wovmoHwI'.* It doesn't mean 
lights that illuminate a pistol; it's not *(HIch wovmoH)wI'.* But you 
might want to avoid that ambiguity, so you think, /lights ON a pistol,/ 
and this leads you to—incorrectly—say **HIchDaq wovmoHwI'.*

I'm not saying this is unquestionably what Okrand did. But this 
particular error happens a lot with students of the language, and Okrand 
is quite capable of making the same mistake for the same reason.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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