tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 26 09:18:44 2002

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Re: agentive -wI'

> jatlh Will:
..
> >If it helps you understand how {-moH} works to think of a verb plus {-moH} 
> >as a
> >separate verb root, fine. Meanwhile, don't overstate the significance of 
> >this
> >idea as if it were some sort of universal truth that the rest of us should
> >adopt in order to better understand the language. A lot of people deal with 
> >{-
> >moH} the same way they deal with all the other suffixes, and they speak the
> >language just fine.
> 
> luq. I'm not saying that it's a universal truth, I'm just saying that on the 
> evidence I had (which, as you have proven, was sketchy to useless in the 
> first place <g> ), this particular idea helped me understand better how 
> <<-moH>> worked, particularly on intransitive verbs.
> 
> For example, if I said <<qaSopqangmoH bISopbe'chugh SoH>> "I am willing to 
> feed you if YOU don't eat", it's a little confusing, as a relatively 
> inexperienced speaker, to translate this as "I am willing to cause you to 
> eat if you don't eat". If I view <<Sop-moH>> as a unit with the meaning "to 
> feed" (rather that "to cause (somebody) to eat), then it sits better in my 
> own mind, it translates better, and I can slot the suffixes of the first 
> three classes in as quasi-infixes rather than suffixes.

Remember that we also have the word {je'} meaning "feed". {SopmoH} really does 
mean "cause to eat". That can be interpreted as "feed", though I would not 
personally consider that to be the first choice to express that:

qaje'qang
Soj qanobqang

For me, {SopmoH} carries the likely connotation of some form of coercion.

> Qapla' 'ej Satlho'
> 
> ro'Han

bIghojlI'mo' jIbelqu'.

Will

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