tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 02 09:27:34 1995

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Re: -lu'

According to Nick Legend Nicholas:
> 
> Hu'tegh! nuq ja' Mark E. Shoulson jay'?
> 
> toH, Hochra', tuqaw'a'? 

not. pIlIjlaHbe'.

> QonoS jabbI'IDmeywIj vISang neH, *Sydney*Daq 
> jItlheDpa'. qaSDI' DIS chu' jaj, pa' jItlheD. qaStaHvIS cha' jar, pa'
> jIghun. jIghunmeH, LISP vIlo'. not LISP vIlo'pu', 'a pIj PROLOG vIlo'pu'.
> PROLOG vIparHa'. 'functional languages' (mI'QeD De'wI'Hol) vIparHa'qu' je.
> 'ach LISP vIparHa'qu'be'. nap pabDaj, 'a napqu'mo' berghmoH je. 'ej
> Common LISP vIlo'nIS; 'libraries' law' lo'moHmo' Hol Sarvetlh, napHa'.

[Translated into a Klingon LISP statement:
Dapar(napqu', poQ(law'(*libraries*)),-be'(Da(*Prolog*)))

How did I do? Hmmm. Maybe:

((napqu', ((*libraries*)law')poQ,((*Prolog*)Da)-be')Dapar

Better?

> =>This is exactly where we diverge opinion-wise on {-lu'}. It is my personal
> =>belief that you have so much influence from the concept of passive in English
> =>that you transfer that onto the way you think of {-lu'}, as do many people.
> =>That's not your fault, but I try to look at {-lu'} much more non-objectively.
> =>Nothing in TKD really suggest that {-lu'} has anything to do with passive.
> =>The prefixes get flopped (I use 'flopped' only while looking for a better
> =>word), but that happens in many languages, and is not the same as transposing
> =>the patient to the syntactic position of subject, since the patient of a
> =>{-lu'} verb in Klingon is still syntactically an object.
> 
> I feel I should underline this, since Will brought it into question: the
> *only* defined difference between the impersonal and the passive is
> syntactic. In the impersonal, the object of a verb remains the object, and
> the subject is blanked out; in a passive, the object becomes the subject,
> and the subject pops up as an oblique. In that respect, Klingon has an
> impersonal, and it's not halfway anything.

While I respect this opinion, I do not agree that just because
there is one defined difference between passive and impersonal,
that means that the indefinite subject necessarily maps to
either.

If the only difference between a Honda Civic CX and a Honda
Civic DX is a more powerful engine and nice upholstery, if you
had to describe a Jaguar and the closest thing in your
vocabulary to describe it would be either a Honda Civic CX or
DX, you'd call it a DX because it has a powerful engine and
nice upholstery, but that still doesn't mean that a Jaguar is
the same thing as a Honda Civic DX. I do not beleive that you
have proved that the indefinite subject is exactly the same
thing as the impersonal.

Okrand never used the word "impersonal" to describe the
indefinite subject. He did use the word "interogative" to
describe the Klingon interogative, and he used the word
"plural" to describe the Klingon plural. So why do you think he
intentionally avoided using the term "impersonal" to describe
the Klingon indefinite subject if he did not somehow consider
it to be different from the impersonal? Do you think he didn't
know the word? Do you think he thought we would all understand
the term "indefinite subject" better than we would understand
the term "impersonal"?

I personally think that you and others who know so well what
the impersonal is have chosen to see something that you think
you recognize and have chosen to make leaps based upon this
presumption, while I don't think you have a very secure
foundation for claiming that a linguist somehow wants to use
the impersonal while calling it something else. Repeating
myself once again, I think the indefinite subject is something
different from either the impersonal OR the passive, though I
think it is nearer to these things than to any other
grammatical construction. This makes it even more open to the
quirks you are about to allude to.

> Now, this does not decide matters one way or the other with -qang, because
> if languages are one thing, they're quirky. The safest bet is to surmise
> that the scope of -qang is in fact ambiguous, with HoHqanglu' meaning either
> 'someone's willing to kill' or 'someone's willing to be killed'. 

Or ask Okrand. I really think this is the most logical next
thing to ask Okrand.

> (That
> alleged paragon of logic, Esperanto, is gloriously ambiguous as to whether
> its equivalent of -moH after transitive verbs makes the base verb passive
> or active: you can say both
> 
> mi mangxigis al la cxevalo herbon
> 'ervaD tI vISopmoH
> 
> or
> 
> mi mangxigis la cxevalon per herbo
> 'er vISopmoH, tI vIlo'taHvIS

Of course it would be far more clear to say:

'er vIje'meH 'oHvaD tI vInob.

Then again, the ambiguity of {je'} here is unfortunate, since I
suppose one might think I was trying to BUY the thing, but my
hope is that the {'oHvaD} would provide enough context to know
that I'm doing it for the benefit of the {'er} and not for some
salesman.

Anyway, I'm still no fan of adding {-moH} to transitive verbs.

> -- 
>  @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @
>  Nick Nicholas. Melbourne University, Aus. [email protected]

charghwI'
-- 

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