tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Aug 03 00:37:31 1995

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

I wrote:
> "Indefinite subject" is the one part of the language I KNOW I don't
> understand fully....

charghwI' wrote:
> [a reasonable explanation of {-lu'}]

Okay, so I did have it right.  I thought there was more to it than that.

I wrote:
> {X legh'eghmoHlu'} "[something] causes X to see him/herself" -- I'm lost.
> Something about {-moHlu'} just doesn't click.

charghwI' wrote:
>We have only one canon example, and that one started one of the
>longest, most frustrating debates this list has ever known. It
>was VERY much abridged and posted in this most recent HolQeD in
>the "Round Table". Pardon me if I avoid reopenning it.
>Does this help at all?

I'm afraid it doesn't. :-)
However, I think I've done enough thinking to try some more derivations.

{qem} is transitive.  {X qem Y} "Y brings X."
{qemmoH} has the two-object problem and we should avoid it.
{lam} is intransitive.  {lam Y} "Y is dirty."  {X lam Y} is nonsense.
{lammoH} is transitive.  {X lammoH Y} "Y causes X to be dirty."
{qem'egh} is "reflexive(?)"  {qem'egh Y} "Y brings him/herself."  {X
qem'egh Y} is nonsense.  Reflexive is similar to intransitive in this way.
I'll go with that thought and see what happens if we replace {lam} with
{qem'egh}.
{qem'eghmoH} is transitive. {X qem'eghmoH Y} "Y causes X to bring
him/herself."  This is a novel concept to me.  There's an {-'egh} on the
verb, but it looks like the {-moH} transfers its effect to the object.

So I don't see the need for {-lu'} in {legh'eghmoHwI'}.  From my attempts
above, {-moH} seems to take care of decoupling the subject from the
{-'egh}.

 -- ghunchu'wI'

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