tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jan 01 06:46:54 1995
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Re: vay' and lu'
I was in the midst of a long and meaningful reply to this when
my mail host crashed. Waaay frustrating. Anyway...
According to [email protected]:
>
> >Subject: Re: vay' and lu'
> >Date: 94-12-29 00:04:22 EST
> ... With {-moH}, then the object can be the agent of
> the main verb as well as patient of the causation. In that case it's fine to
> transfer volition to it.
Ahhhhhhh. New point. You never mentioned that before. That is
actually an excellent point. Of course, it leaves one to wonder
why, if this is true, it does not happen with {-laH} in any of
the examples using {-moHlaH}. In those cases, ability always
remains with the subject. I think we really need Okrand to
respond on this one.
...
> >If we accept that {-lu'} moves volition to the object, we gain
> >a tool in the language. {Xqanglu'} indicates that the object is
> >willing to be Xed, while {Xqang vay'} means that somebody is
> >willing to X the object. We can be clear about who gets
> >volition. If this is not accepted, then we can never be clear
> >on who gets volition, and we get no new tools to disambiguate.
> >The language loses something.
>
> There are plenty of things the language can't do that English can, and there
> are plenty more things that the language can do that English can't. The
> latter are so much more elusive to us, however, so we often have trouble
> believing that. You can't want {-lu'} to transfer volition to the object just
> for a tiny semantic expansion that you may never have chance to use.
You and others have come up with plenty of examples that hardly
deserve to be belittled to this extent. "You are afraid to be
killed," vs. "Anybody is afraid to kill you," could be as
simple as {DaHoHvIplu'} vs. {DuHoHvIp vay'}, or the former
would be quite difficult to express at all, if this is not
Okrand's wish for use of {-lu'}. "Someone is ready to teach
you," vs. "You are ready to be taught," could be {DughojrupmoH
vay'} vs. {DaghojrupmoHlu'}. This is hardly a "tiny semantic
expansion that you may never have a chance to use."
...
> This entire argument is probably worthless to us both as far as our usage is
> concerned. My long involved argument with Holtej on whether N-N compounds and
> possessives are really one and the same structure with equivalent meanings
> has proven to be quite useless in either of our usages, with no loss of
> understanding clarity, etc., on anyone's part.
While I often think this is the case, I think this particular
argument is over a meaningful void in clarity in TKD. I think
we would all be better off if it were resolved by Okrand.
> What I would really like to see is so much more of our using tlhIngan Hol in
> its raw form here on the list. Why don't we? Do we not have something to talk
> about? Are we too lazy? I dunno.
Well, I believe that I started doing that a few weeks ago when
you got into these long English arguments about Klingon
grammar...
yIbepQo' neH. yIjatlh! tlhIngan Hol yIlo'qu'!
> Guido
>
I am beginning my next project: COKED - the Comprehensive,
Online Klingon English Dictionary, which is designed to allow
the all canon to respond to queries, like "Give me every
example of {-taH} used in canon," or whatever...
charghwI'
--
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