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

[SuStel]

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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