tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 02 13:54:36 1995

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Re: Re[2]: }} KLBC: Life is like...

>Date: Tue, 1 Aug 1995 23:27:53 -0500
>From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)

>ghItlh charghwI':
>> [lots of sneaky derivation omitted]
>> So, perhaps legh'eghmoHlu'wI' would mean
>> "thing that makes one see ones self". A mirror.

>If I were more comfortable with {-lu'} I might be happier with this.
>"Indefinite subject" is the one part of the language I KNOW I don't
>understand fully.  It's less than a page in the dictionary, but I can't
>quite make myself feel secure about how it works.  The third-person
>singular object verb prefixes get turned around to apply to the object
>rather than the subject, and the subject is unstated?  {vIlegh} "I see it",
>{vIleghlu'} "[something] sees me"?

>{X legh Y} "Y sees X" -- fine.
>{X leghmoH Y} "Y causes X to see" -- fine.
>(legh'egh X} "X sees him/herself" -- fine.
>{X legh'eghmoHlu'} "[something] causes X to see him/herself" -- I'm lost.
>Something about {-moHlu'} just doesn't click.
>{legh'eghmoHlu'wI'} "thing which causes one to see oneself" -- follows
>nicely from the previous sentence, but I'm not sure why that sentence is
>correct.  Does anybody have any helpful explanations?

It doesn't follow for me either.  "-lu'" means that the subject of this
verb is indefinite.  "-wI'" means that the subject of this verb is the
thing we're talking about (ghunwI' says there's some programming going on,
and we want to deal with the thing doing the programming as a noun:
programmer).  "-lu'wI'" seems to be trying to do two things at once: We
want to talk about the thing that's doing this verb... oh, and that sthing
is indefinite, so we're not mentioning it."  Trying to have the 'Iwchab and
eat it too.

I guess maybe charghwI' is using the "-lu'" here apply to the "legh'egh"
part, constructing it thusly:

"legh'egh X": X sees self.
"legh'eghlu'": something indefinite sees self.
"legh'eghlu' X" + "-moH Y" would mean "Y causes that (legh'egh X)", but
because of suffix ordering the "-moH" actually comes before "-lu'"

and so from there.

It's pretty hairy; too much so to be easy to follow.

~mark

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