[tlhIngan Hol] How would you express "root of a tree" ?

[De'vID]

On Sat, 13 Jul 2019 at 10:27, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:

> De'vID:
> > I think you're failing to understand that
> > not all definitions which are comma-
> > separated lists work the same way. Some
> > are restrictive while others are expansive.
>
> I understand this just fine.
>
> What I don't understand, is absent Ca'Non, who will decide in such cases,
> what goes for what word.
>

You can usually tell by the relationship of the words in the list to one
another.

{Haw'} v. "flee, get out" is restrictive, because they overlap in meaning,
and {Haw'} is in the intersect. There is a meaning of "flee" which isn't
covered by "get out" (e.g., "the changing mists on the mountain side flee
[vanish] before the blazing morning sun"). There are meanings of "get out"
which isn't covered by "flee" (e.g., "she got out [removed, retrieved] her
wallet from her pocket"). The other term is there to restrict the meaning.

There are cases in which interpreting the list as restrictive is obviously
wrong. {beq} n. "crew, crewman" can obviously refer to female crew members.
The "crewman" isn't there to restrict the definition to men. It's to
clarify that the word refers to a single member of the crew, not to the
entire crew. (In Star Trek, especially in TOS, "crewman" seems to be
neutral and can refer to either men or women.)

Show me a Ca'Non example of {'oQqar} being used for "simple" roots, and
> I'll be convinced.
>

AFAIK, {ghargh} has never been used to mean "serpent" in canon, either.
Does that mean you'll never use it that way even if you needed a word for
"serpent", until it's used that way in canon?

There are a lot of these comma-separated definitions where only one
translation has been used in canon. For example, I don't recall {bom} n.
"song, chant" ever being used to mean "chant". Then there's {Duj} n. "ship,
boat", which has been used in canon for "ship" and "barge" (but I think not
"boat"). {lupwI'} n. "jitney, bus" has only ever been translated as
"jitney".

If you think that {'oQqar} can't mean just "root", what do you think the
word "root" is doing there in the definition? Why isn't the definition just
"tuber"?

-- 
De'vID
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