tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Oct 20 07:34:07 1993
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the mysterious DOUBLE PREDICATE CAUSITIVES
As I mentioned, we now finally have some evidence of double-objects in the
canon, in the new tape. I hope to write an article about the subject for
the next HolQeD. We have sentences in the tape like {ghIchwIj
DabochmoHchugh, ghIchlIj qanob}, {ro'qegh 'Iwchab HInob}, {jagh
lucharghlu'ta'bogh ?HuH ghopDu'lIj lungaSjaj} (HuH apparently means
"gall"). Note that it's not a function of causatives (in the sense that
there has to be a "-moH" on the verb), it's a function of meaning (Don't
tell me that "ghojmoH" doesn't mean "to teach", but rather "to cause to
learn"; for one thing I don't see the difference, aside from the fact that
English chooses to have an unrelated word, and for another would you then
tell me that Klingon, or Hebrew for that matter, has *no* word for "to
teach"? The only words that I know for it are derived from its causative
moods). A mentioned some months back that for some reason it made sense to
me to translate "They call the wind Mariah" as {"Maria" SuS lupong}, or
perhaps {"Mariah"'e'}. It looks like there's some support for such things
now.
I don't see that "mughojmoHwI'" is necessarily best for "my teacher"; it's
certainly okay, but then again so is "ghojmoHwI'wI'". The first means "the
one who teaches me", the second "my one who teaches". Granted,
"mughojmoHwI'" is more accurate and unambiguous, as "ghojmoHwI'wI'" could
mean "the teacher I hired", but the context will usually disambiguate. For
lojbanists out there, it's the difference between "le ctuca be mi" vs. "le
ctuca pe mi". This came up once before, in Nick Nicholas' translation of
the Lord's Prayer, where he he translated "those who transgressed against
us" as "nuQu'maghwI'pu'" (lets ignore the "Qu'" element for now). I
thought that "maghwI'pu'ma'" would be better, now I'm not sure. I think
you could do either.
~mark