[tlhIngan Hol] using {ngan} as a suffix {ngan} as the suffix {-ngan}

[SuStel]

On 1/26/2022 3:28 PM, Iikka Hauhio wrote:
> Maybe my previous message wasn'r clear. In English, some nouns are 
> written together and some are not for historical reasons (because they 
> are lexicalized such way).

No. In English, some nouns are lexicalized as written together and some 
are not because the lexicons are attempting to reflect current usage. 
It's not the other way around.


> With Klingon, there is are no lexicalized words. The Okrandian 
> notation is a human-made brand new writing system with no (fictive) 
> history. There is no reason to add historic ambiguity.

So are we using different definitions of the word /lexicalized?/ I'm 
using it to mean those words that Okrand has given to us as the product 
of a (fictitious) Klingon informant saying, "This is a real word." 
Sometimes it's not always easy to tell when Maltz is giving us a word 
that would appear in a dictionary on Kronos and when he's trying to find 
a good translation for some human concept, but we have plenty of 
definitely-in-a-dictionary examples to work from.

What I've been talking about has nothing to do with whether Klingons 
writing in their own script routinely combine nouns into complex nouns 
or keep them separate. It's all about how /we/ write Klingon. I haven't 
said anything about historic ambiguity in the latinized Klingon writing 
system; I only mentioned ambiguity in the context of hyphens in English 
nouns.


>
> So what does using spaces mean. It does not mean:
>
> - Lexicalization
> - Whether the word is in the dictionary or not
> - Whether the word is canon or not
> - Special grammar, as we can interpret it as a regular noun-noun 
> cosntruct and it follows the same rules (not including yejquv, SeHjan, 
> etc.)
> - Historical reason (as the writing system is "new")
>
> There seems to be no meaning.

For a third time.

It doesn't have a grammatical meaning in spoken Klingon.

It is a convention that we follow so we can keep straight what's 
lexicalized and what isn't.

I don't see how I can explain that any clearer.


>
> > In Finnish and German, it's not important, because you haven't got a 
> fictional race whose language you are trying to piece together through 
> fictitious anthropological and archaeological research. You can ask 
> native Finnish and German speakers, "Is this a word you'd find in the 
> dictionary?" That is almost impossible in Klingon, and even where it 
> is possible, it's done through someone who failed to live up to your 
> ideal of not-English when he invented it.
>
> Irrelevant, as the spacing does not signify whether or not the word is 
> included in a dictionary.

Wow. Whenever a discussion covers several topics, you always cherry-pick 
an argument from one part and apply it to another to show how it doesn't 
work.

When a student of Klingon comes across a sentence like *vaj toDuj Daj 
ngeHbejDIvI',* if they're as awesome as a Finn they're going to be 
looking in the word-list for the word *ngeHbejDIvI',* and they'll fail 
to find it. They'll have to find and differentiate between *ngeH, 
ngeHbej, bej, DI, vI', *and *DIvI'.* This sentence is already hard to 
figure out because of its origin, but honestly the only way to really 
parse it is to point out that it looks like this: *vaj toDuj Daj ngeHbej 
DI vI'.* For the sake of understanding sentences like this easier, we go 
along with the convention that we put spaces between words that have 
been lexicalized for us.

Not because it's said any differently.

Not because the grammar changes.

Simply because the convention has been established to make it easier to 
understand.

Now, if it's really the case that spacing doesn't matter, then it also 
doesn't matter if we /do/ include spacing, so what are you complaining 
about?



> > Yes, it is a CONVENTION for us. Another convention we use is spacing 
> noun-nouns that aren't lexicalized as no-space compounds. Not because 
> Klingon grammar demands it, but because we want to keep distinct our 
> knowledge of what is a known term and what is something we made up 
> ourselves.
>
> As "tuq Degh" etc. shows, there are "known terms" not made by us 
> written without a space.

You're cherry-picking from different parts of the argument again.


> > It's not a grammatical requirement; it's a convention to keep 
> ourselves sane.
>
> What exactly is it that keeps us sane? Can you give me one consitent 
> property that compounds written without a space have that compounds 
> written with a space don't? It doesn't seem to mean anything.

Totally not what I argued and said explicitly two times before this message.


> According to Lieven, Okrand uses spaces inconsistently as Klingon 
> wasn't supposed to be a written language and the Okrandian notation 
> was supposed to be a pronunciation guide. If this is true, why should 
> we bother to use spaces consistently?

If this is true, then why /shouldn't/ we impose our own convention of 
including spaces?

Now, let's remember that there ARE certain situations where Okrand has 
explicitly said that spacing matters.

http://klingon.wiki/En/Spacing

*DI'raq loD,* and all male/female distinctions for animals, are written 
as two words, we are told.

Okrand edited *qo'Sor* to *qo' Sor* in /The Klingon Art of War./

*wabDo* as one word means a measurement term /(Mach);/ *wab Do* as two 
words means /speed of sound./

With two exceptions, all *XQeD* and *Xtej* sciences and scientist words 
are written with no space, we are told.

So there ARE grammatical differences with spaces after all.

Hey, maybe they're not clearly understood. It's possible. But that would 
suggest that keeping the words separate is the safer thing to do, right? 
After all, TKD tells us how to construct noun-nouns but not that we can 
put together our own one-word compounds.

If only we could establish a convention that handles this for us...

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/attachments/20220126/0eb0b4d0/attachment-0002.htm>