tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jun 02 15:24:02 1994
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Re: -moH and transitivity
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: -moH and transitivity
- Date: Fri, 03 Jun 94 01:03:11 EDT
> Reply to: -moH and transitivity
>I was thinking about -moH and I realized I understand it less than I
>thought I did. Two example from TKD are:
> nuqDaq waqwIj vIlamHa'choHmoH
> Du'IHchoHmoH mIvvam
>In both cases, an intransitive verb (lamHa'choH, become clean;
>'IHchoH, become beautiful) is changed to a transitive verb
>(lamHa'choHmoH, cause SOMETHING to become clean; 'IHchoHmoH,
>cause SOMETHING to become beautiful). In fact, in all the canonical
>examples of -moH that I can find, it is used with an intransitive
>verb. Is it legal to use -moH on a transitive verb?
>If it is, the resulting verb has *two* objects. For example, HoHmoH
>would be to cause SOMEONE to kill SOMEONE ELSE. "HoD qaHoHmoH"
>would seem to mean "I cause you to kill the captain." But qa-
>implies the object is "you", what is that HoD doing there? And how
>could you say "I cause the officer to kill the captain"?
>"HoD yaS vIHoHmoH" must be wrong; there is no evidence for two objects
>strung together like this. Besides, it can be read "I caused him to
>kill the captain's officer."
>--nachHegh
>[email protected]
Basically you do have a rather good handle of {-moH}. It is much more common
with intransitive verbs, but not forbidden from use with transitive ones.
Normally when we want to say something like, "Maltz causes Torg to hit
Koloth", it comes out like so: {qolotlh qIp torgh 'e' qaSmoH matlh}.
This method is pretty useful and generally agreed upon for this type of
contruction. The general formula for it is "X cause Y to [verb] Z" --> {Z
[verb] Y 'e' qaSmoH X}.
There is another slightly less understood way to do this. It is used more in
some languages like Esperanto or Hebrew, but I'm still not sure how it works
in Hol; I'm still playing around with it myself.
"Maltz causes Torg to hit Koloth." {torghvaD qolotlh qIpmoH matlh}
"X causes Y to [verb] Z" --> {YvaD Z [verb]moH X}.
The latter method probably does not fit in with the rest of Klingon as well.
Actually, when it comes down to it, I doubt I have really suffered a great
deal without a way to say {X causes Y to [verb[ Z}. If I do come across a
need for it, I simple revert to the ol' {...'e' qaSmoH} construction. It's
simple. It's straightforward. It's the way to go.
Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos