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

[Iikka Hauhio]

>

> As "tuq Degh" etc. shows, there are "known terms" not made by us written without a space.

This should be "'known terms' not made by us written with a space".

Iikka "fergusq" Hauhio
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Wednesday, January 26th, 2022 at 22.28, Iikka Hauhio <fergusq at protonmail.com> wrote:

> There is no need to shout.
>
> 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). 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 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.
>
>> 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.
>
>> 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.
>
>> 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.
>
> 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?
>
> Iikka "fergusq" Hauhio
> ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> On Wednesday, January 26th, 2022 at 22.11, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
>
>> On 1/26/2022 2:19 PM, Iikka Hauhio wrote:
>>
>>>> yesusingspacesandotherkindsofpunctuationareaconventionbutsomeconventionsaremoreimportantthanothers On this list, the convention is to not forge new compound nouns where there is no precedent for doing so.
>>>
>>> I think the Klingon model is heavily inspired by English. English has two kinds of compound words, words like "post office" written with space and words like "mailbox" written without a space. It is quite arbitrary.
>>
>> No, it's not arbitrary, though you may not know how this comes to be, and there are three types of compound nouns, not two. In general, in American English, when a relatively new compound becomes lexicalized, it is lexicalized as two separate words. Often, compounds will become hyphenated to disambiguate which nouns are tied to which in strings of nouns, and these hyphenated forms become lexicalized. Finally, a very common compound will become a single word with no punctuation after long use.
>>
>> No, it's not totally consistent, but it's also not "quite arbitrary." The general pattern is
>>
>> N1 N2 --> N1-N2 --> N1N2
>> or
>> N1 N2 --> N1N2
>>
>> depending on whether the word needed to be disambiguated with a hyphen a lot.
>>
>> English dictionaries are constantly removing hyphens from nouns as English evolves and new editions are published. Bumble-bee to bumblebee; cry-baby to crybaby, pigeon-hole to pigeonhole, and so on.
>>
>> It also depends on dialect. In some old-fashioned British English dialects, one hyphenates nearly every genitive noun pair. Read The Lord of the Rings in English for an example. As dictionaries get updated, a lot of genitives that were hyphenated in British English are dropping their hyphens, whether or not they lose the space between them.
>>
>> At the end of the day, YES, KLINGON SHOWS HEAVY ENGLISH BIAS, and if you want to study Klingon, you have to learn to live with that.
>>
>>> In languages like Finnish
>>
>> Here we go.
>>
>>> and German, all compound words are written together without a space, and people don't see any difference between lexicalized and non-lexicalized compounds. Why does there have to be a distinction? Is it important to use punctuation to mark this distinction?
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>> The rules Okrand use are not clear. There are compounds written with a space that appear in Okrand's dictionaries (for example "tuq Degh" in KGT). If that is not lexicalized, why is it listed in a dictionary?
>>
>> Those are lexicalized. Who said they're not?
>>
>>> Clearly spaces are not, for example, used to differentiate between canon compounds and non-canon compounds, as "tuq Degh" is a canon compound that has a space.
>>
>> Nobody said noun-nouns with spaces can't be lexicalized. I said if we form no-space compounds of our own, we lose the ability to distinguish between canonical lexicalization and otherwise. I'll say it again, because you didn't read it the first time: It's not a grammatical requirement; it's a convention to keep ourselves sane.
>>
>>> If there is no linguistic reason to write some compounds with space and some without, I'd prefer to write all of them in the same way. One way might be to wrote possessive noun-noun constructions with a space and all other without. That would at least be useful for the reader.
>>
>> So, what, are we taking a vote now?
>>
>>> Remember that the Okrandian notation is a romanization. It is a tool for us, not for Klingons.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> And even that convention isn't arbitrary. Okrand himself rarely pushes together two nouns that he hasn't separately lexicalized for us that way. Our convention comes from his own habits.
>>
>> --
>> SuStel
>> http://trimboli.name
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