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

[De'vID]

On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 at 00:09, Iikka Hauhio <fergusq at protonmail.com> wrote:

> > Where you are getting your interpretation is mysterious. Okrand
> “depicts” lexicalization of a term the same way any linguist does: by
> including it in a dictionary. This is explicit in the first paragraph of
> TKD section 3.4. The noun-noun construction. Read it yourself and reflect
> that it contradicts a lot of both what you’re saying and what you’re
> misconstruing others as saying.
>
> As I have said before, there are entries in Okrand's dictionaries that
> have spaces. Therefore, the spacing does not tell us whether or not the
> word is found in a dictionary or not.
>
> From TKD:
>
> > Some combinations of two (or more) nouns in a row are so common as to
> have become everyday words. These are the compound nouns (as discussed in
> section 2.0.0). In addition, it is possible to combine nouns in the manner
> of a compound noun to produce a new construct even if it is not a
> legitimate compound noun ("legitimate" in the sense that it would be found
> in a dictionary).
>
> Okrand contradicts himself by including compound nouns with spaces in his
> dictionary. If they are in the dictionary, they should be "legitimate" and
> therefore be written without spaces.
>
> That, or then he is referring to a fictional Klingon dictionary and not
> his own dictionary. We don't know on what basis fictional Klingons include
> words in their dictionaries. That is what I referred to when I said "Then
> Okrand depicts this fictional lexicalization with the spaces."
>

I think you've conflated two different things which are described in TKD,
compound nouns (section 3.2.1) and the noun-noun construction (section
3.4). Both of these can be lexicalised (i.e., appear in the dictionary). By
convention, the former is written without a space, while the latter is
written with spaces.

I also think, as a result of this conflation, that you're misreading the
sentence ("legitimate" in the sense that it would be found in a
dictionary). The unwritten implication here is "... found in a dictionary
(as one word written without spaces)". You wrote that he contradicts
himself by including "compound nouns with spaces", but it's not a
contradiction because compound nouns are written without spaces in his
convention. The dictionary contains both compound nouns (without spaces)
*and* noun-noun constructions (with spaces), but by the classification
described in TKD, they are different classes of noun constructs.

-- 
De'vID
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