It’s the thing that I noticed while beginning to use the language. Viewing English from Klingon, I became aware of how intensely English relies on nouns. It’s so common for us to use nouns as verbs, until the language finally admits, “okay, okay, you can use it as a verb, too.”
Does that show that English relies on nouns or that it relies so
much on verbs that it appropriates nouns to do verb jobs?
Witness: phone, fax, telegraph, text, message, etc. These were nouns, and we replaced the action of using the noun with the noun word, treating it like a verb, until somebody decided the practice was common enough to update the dictionaries. I’ll phone you. I’ll message you. I’ll Skype you. Can you fax that? Don’t worry. I’ll MuseScore that tune for the band and PDF the lyrics.
This is all stuff you can’t do in Klingon.
More specifically, it's stuff we're not allowed to do in
Klingon, because we're not Klingons setting the usage patterns of
the Klingon language. But we have evidence that Klingons may do
this sort of thing in the noun-verb pairs that we do have. But
only monosyllabic words have noun-verb pairs, so it's possible
that the process tends to go the other way in Klingon: verbs
sometimes become nouns over time. The language of the section on -ghach
("It is not known if all verbs can be used as nouns...") perhaps
hits at this.
Nouns get their grammatical function in a sentence based upon the relationship to the verb, either positionally or by Type 5 suffix.
The roles granted by type 5 suffixes do not in any way come from a relationship to the verb. Type 5'd nouns just get stuck at the front of the sentence for lack of any other place to put them. They mix with the adverbials. They can also be time expressions that also have no relationship to the verb other than just being in the same sentence. The point that all complete Klingons sentences must have a verb is correct; the point that all syntactic nouns are subordinate to that verb is not.
They also come FIRST. That ought to count for something. In
English, if you want to establish a context before diving into a
sentence, you put it first and set it off with a comma: In my
room, I constructed the weapon. If you put the context last,
it's not set off by a comma, but it also has less importance in
the sentence: I constructed the weapon in my room. In
Klingon we don't have a choice; the locative always comes first: pa'wIjDaq
nuH vImutlhmoHpu'.
English uses relative pronouns, where Klingon uses a relative clause indicated by the suffix on the verb changing the mechanism from a noun to a verb, divorcing the relative pronoun from its identical question word in English.
Eh? What? I don't understand what process you're describing here.
English relative pronouns are one of those areas where it's
better to rethink your approach to your idea using the tools of
Klingon. There is no single, formulaic translation of relative
pronouns. I know what word you said might be rendered with
a relative clause in Klingon (mu' Dajatlhpu'bogh vISov),
but I know what you're doing wouldn't need to be (Qu'lIj
vISov). It depends on the available vocabulary and what
you're trying to say.
Klingon has more nouns than verbs in the vocabulary because each noun has a more narrow range of potential meaning than each verb, especially since so many of these nouns are Proper Nouns. Nouns are detail oriented, specifying the thing you are talking about, while verbs give you the general action, narrowed by the wide range of suffixes, with perhaps a few nouns tossed in, optionally, just to be clear.
English loads a ton of meaning into the verb be. I'm
doing the Welsh course on Duolingo, and I've discovered that Welsh
places even more emphasis on its version of be (bod): most
sentences use it in some way. Even the many ways to say yes
in Welsh are just various forms of bod. Does that mean
English and Welsh are verb-centric languages? (No. And in Welsh,
most verbs are actually "verb-nouns," able to be used as either in
the way English singing can be.)
I don't think the breadth of meaning for any given word or group
of words is indicative of how "centric" a language is, either way.
The earlier vocabulary in Klingon was weighted heavily toward verbs. Most of the more recent vocabulary has been nouns. I made my observation back before all these language programs that Okrand has been asked to provide words for asked for new words, almost exclusively nouns.
More specifically, the earlier vocabulary in Klingon was weighted
heavily toward monosyllables, and we know that almost all verbs
are monosyllables. One might propose that the older, core words of
Klingon are the monosyllables, and that the newer words are mostly
complex nouns that came about through centuries of combinations of
those monosyllables, but that since "verbs are monosyllabic"
remains a general rule, the process doesn't work for creating
verbs. This proposal would suggest that nouns are far more
productive in Klingon than verbs. (I'm not making this proposal;
I'm just showing that there are possible explanations other than
"Klingon is verb-centric" for the preponderance of multisyllabic
nouns outside the originally known core of words.)
Check out statistics, for those of you who like doing this. Starting at most recent new words and sifting back to the original vocabulary, look at how Okrand keeps coming up with new nouns to flesh out the vocabulary, and how rarely he sees need to come up with new verbs.
This just speaks more to the fact that there are far more things in the world than actions to perform on or by them. A fork has words for the points, slots, tines, root, back, neck, and handle, but you generally only use a fork or, by combining with a preposition, eat with one. Most technologies have an abundance of nouns for different parts of things. Most arts have an abundance of nouns for different components of things. Most industries have an abundance of nouns for everything. Sometimes there are jargony verbs, but often these are derived from the nouns.
Klingon is not immune to this. Think of all the body parts we
have words for. As a counterpoint, consider that the words for
fingers and toes are verbs, and that the owners of these limbs
actively use them. It's just a different balance.
In order to very quickly build a vocabulary that could express a wide range of meaning, Okrand started with mostly verbs,
I'd like to see a formal count before accepting this claim
(including only root words). I doubt it.
In English, nouns are first. Verbs glue the nouns together, assisted by a wide, floral variety of helper words that are critical in determining the meaning of the sentence. Witness the example in a message years ago where we move the word “only” around among the words in the sentence “I hit the baby in the head.”
You can do the same thing in Klingon.
ghu nach vIqIp. I hit the baby's head.
ghu neH nach vIqIp. I hit the head of only the baby
(no one else's head).
ghu nach neH vIqIp. I hit only the baby's head (no
other part of the baby).
ghu nach vIqIp neH. I only hit the baby's head (I
don't do anything more significant).
ghu nach vIqIp jIH neH. Only I hit the baby's head.
I don't see how this illustrates how verbs are central and other
words are "floral."
Word order in English is like American salads: Tossed. Helper words can stitch together almost any order of nouns and verbs you like in English.
Overstated. English word order is flexible, but not completely
so. English has almost no case system by which you can identify
noun roles. Preposition objects need to come in certain places
(and I'm not referring to the bogus rule about not ending a
sentence with a preposition). Certain word orders are only allowed
in poetic or archaic registers. (I can say I am going to the
store, but only in a poem or historical roleplay can I say To
the store go I.) English has a LOT of hidden rules that
native speakers simply aren't aware of unless they've studied
them.
Klingon has much more strict rules for word order, based on the positions of nouns and chuvmey relative to the verb at the core of each clause.
Klingon does have a more strict order of syntax, but it also has
its flexibilities. Nouns and adverbials get tossed into the
pre-object soup of sentences. Words and suffixes can often be
dropped at the discretion of the speaker, and there's even an
entire register in which even more words and affixes can be
dropped. Different cohorts will reorder words sometimes. We
sometimes argue about the order of words in noun-noun
constructions and can't the benefit or indeed the difference of
one order over another.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name