<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 1/26/2022 4:31 PM, Iikka Hauhio
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CghGtQwN9r0we4VmeT-kM04ZOAFF0xNe0GkssaH-2NmhC5oPdYMIyv6P5R2VFcWMqCUiT65aNePOy6EbW2saLOGcxT_YJ7H7Ki7mpezqoYg=@protonmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14px;">So if I
interpret you correctly, you argue that Klingons themselves
label some compounds as lexicalized as some as not, on a basis
unknown to us. Then Okrand depicts this fictional lexicalization
with the spaces.<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>I'm not going to repeat myself on the difference between native
grammar and convention. You're not understanding the distinction.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CghGtQwN9r0we4VmeT-kM04ZOAFF0xNe0GkssaH-2NmhC5oPdYMIyv6P5R2VFcWMqCUiT65aNePOy6EbW2saLOGcxT_YJ7H7Ki7mpezqoYg=@protonmail.com">
<div style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14px;">Outside the
fiction of Klingon, I argue that all canon compounds (spaces or
no spaces) in TKD, KGT and other dictionary listings are
lexicalized, unless explicitly stated by Okrand that they are
not. Spaces are not useful in this regard.<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>You and I use Klingon entirely outside of the fiction of Klingon,
but we pretend that we have a bridge to the inside, and we get all
our information about Klingon from across that bridge and only
from across that bridge. If we didn't, then there would be no
reason at all to care about what Okrand says about Klingon, and we
could all just make up whatever words and rules we liked. But
we're NOT inside that fiction ourselves. We can't go to Kronos and
meet Klingons; we can't make a subspace call to a Klingon planet;
we can't even hope to be invaded by Klingons in the future. We
have only that little fiction between studying an "alien" language
and arguing about a semi-joke language that some linguist threw
together as a novelty.<br>
</p>
<p>Even as things are, there are no Klingon Police that will come
and arrest you if you decide you want to shove nouns together. Go
right ahead. It would be an interesting test to see if others
would tolerate it.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CghGtQwN9r0we4VmeT-kM04ZOAFF0xNe0GkssaH-2NmhC5oPdYMIyv6P5R2VFcWMqCUiT65aNePOy6EbW2saLOGcxT_YJ7H7Ki7mpezqoYg=@protonmail.com">
<div style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14px;">
<div style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14px;">I'm not
promoting any particular alternative punctuation. I'm just
saying that the current usage is not consistent and that there
are possible ways to write consistently:</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>If you're expecting to find consistency in Klingon, you're going
to be sorely disappointed. Much of the fun is in recognizing that
we don't know and can't predict the answer and trying to figure it
out.</p>
<p>You're saying that the current usage is not consistent. I
completely agree. There are examples of compound nouns I wouldn't
expect to be compounded, and examples of noun-nouns that I could
easily imagine being compounded.</p>
<p>You're saying there are possible ways to write consistently.
Again, I agree. We could make up our own rules to cover all
situations. And we <i>do</i> have our own rules: we have
developed a convention whereby we do not invent our own compounds,
and any genitive nouns get a space before their head nouns; only
Okrand can invent compounds. It's not always consistent with what
Okrand has done, but as you AND Okrand both admit, Okrand himself
hasn't been consistent.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
SuStel
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://trimboli.name">http://trimboli.name</a></pre>
</body>
</html>