tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 29 08:29:20 1996
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Re: cha'vatlh loSmaH chorgh mu'
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>Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 01:05:42 -0700
>From: [email protected] (CT)
>qaStaHvIS nungpu'bogh Hogh HujchoHlaw' Hoch
>pay' jabbI'IDmey vIlaDlaH 'ej mu'ghom vIlo'nISbe'law'
>jIHvaD Hol ghojmeH ghunlu'wI' nob ghojmoHwI'
This deserves comment, and in DIvI' Hol for clarity.
You're trying to use "*ghunlu'wI'" for "programs" working on "thing which
is programmed." I don't believe you can do that.
This is part of the problem with thinking of "-lu'" as a passivizer. It
isn't. It's specifically said to indicate an indefinite subject (what
linguists would call an impersonal construction). It doesn't simply swap
the places of the subject and object (and no, A.Appleyard, there isn't a
suffix to do that either). It does seem to have that effect on prefixes,
but Okrand seemed to be very careful to explain that it indicates the
*subject* is indefinite, not that it swaps.
OK, so what's the problem? The problem is that "-wI'" talks about
subjects. Verb+"-wI'" means "I'm talking about the subject of a sentence
of something doing the verb." So "ghunwI'" is the subject of the verb
"ghun"; it's the programmer. Attaching -wI' to a verb with -lu' on it
sounds like you're saying "something's programming, and I'm talking about
that indefinite something that's programming." Syntax error. If
something's so indefinite and unimportant you're using -lu' to elide it,
how can it be important enough to talk about as something in the sentence?
There is no known generic way to talk about the *object* of a verb as a
noun in the sentence, short of using a full-fledged relative clause and
"-bogh." The "-ghach" suffix apparently *sometimes* has this meaning,
according to Okrand in HolQeD, but not always. There may be some
exceptions in some constructions, I haven't thought them all through, but
it seems to me that "-lu'" and "-wI'" are semantically incompatible.
~mark
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