tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Dec 14 12:13:01 1994

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Re: -lu'

>Date: Wed, 14 Dec 1994 09:43:39 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: Jeremy Cowan <[email protected]>

>On Wed, 14 Dec 1994 Guido wrote:
>> {HeghqangmoHlu'pu'} = "it made him/her willing to die" (TKD pg 45)

>-lu' has always provided problems for me so I would like to encourage 
>continuation of this discussion.  To address some of my specific problems 
>and to spur further conversation, I would like to ask a couple of simple 
>questions.  I want EVERYONE to reply.

Well, for starters, were *I* saying this sentence (depending on the
context), most of the time I wouldn't use -lu' at all.  After all, the
English "It made him willing to die" implies that there was something
specific that did so, so I'd use an implicit or explicit "'oH" and leave it
at that.  I'd only use the impersonal -lu' if I wanted to say that
something really unspecified did it (which we in English would probably
cast as "Maltz was made to be willing to die"---not that -lu' is passive,
but that's how we'd say the closest English equivalent).

>1) How would YOU say, "It made Maltz willing to die"?

matlh HeghqangmoH

>2) How would YOU say, "It made him/her willing to destroy the ship"?

Tricky... This is another question altogether.  It goes back into the
"double-objects" problem: what do you do when you throw "-moH" on a verb
that already has an object?  That's been hacked at to death on this list
many times.  I mean, how would you say just "The captain made Maltz destroy
the ship"?  Without the -qang at all.  That's a problem in and of itself.
The most long-winded and unambiguous answer is "Duj Qaw' matlh 'e' qaSmoH
HoD."  The question is under what circumstances would something else be
okay.  e.g. "The officer taught biology to the children", I'd accept
"puqvaD yInQeD ghojmoH yaS."  But I doubt I'd buy "?matlhvaD Duj Qaw'moH
HoD."  Maybe something like "raDmo' HoD, Duj Qaw' matlh." and so on.

Thus, the long-winded answer to this, the one we can be surest of, would
probably be

Duj Qaw'qang ghaH 'e' qaSmoH ['oH]

I'd probably use an explicit ghaH and 'oH to prevent the interpretation
that one person caused the event that he/she him/herself would be willing
to destroy the ship.

>3) And to be complete, "It made Maltz willing to destroy the ship"?

See above.

>4) Finally, do you have cannon (i.e. Okrandian) support for these 
>sentences or are these personal opinions?  Please present your support.

See some past arguments regarding double-objects... I'll see if I can find
them...

~mark

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