tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 08 07:58:57 1996
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Re: lo'laH, moSwav, latlh
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>Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 18:28:43 -0800
>From: "Donald E. Vick" <[email protected]>
>
>>It's hard to tell, but my instincts have always told me that words listed in
>>the dictionary like {jubbe'} and {pujmoH} are there simply because they seemed
>>like obvious extensions to the language which would occur frequently. It is
>>my opinion, but I don't believe that {pujmoH} is a seperate verb. You can't
>>say *{pujmoHnIS}, you must say {pujnISmoH}. My belief isn't proven anywhere
>>that I know of, but you certainly won't be wrong if you follow it!
> Maybe I am excessively Klingomorphizing, but I'd think if they were just
>"obvious extensions" he'd have skipped them. There are certainly enough holes
>that he left for us to figure out. If he took the trouble to list them as
>separate verbs, they ought to *be* separate verbs. My take on your example
>would be that you could use the verb <pujmoH> and come up with <pujmoHnIS>
>or you could use the *other* verb <puj> in expressing the same concept, and
>come up with <pujnISmoH>.
I think I'm with SuStel here. At least some of these combinations are very
definitely "obvious extensions" that he put in to make sure folks with less
comfort in foreign languages would see what was going on. When you know
about causation, it's pretty clear to see how "be weak" plus a causative
would be "weaken," but to someone who's just learning that there are
languages other than English (and there are more of those than I like to
think about) it can be something of a revelation. It's even more important
in other words, because English is very free with its transitivity (the
subject of "to break" may or may not be the thing that winds up in pieces,
depending on whether it is used as a transitive verb or an intransitive
verb in English [The stick broke. The stick broke the glass.]) Klingon,
however, is more meticulous, and Okrand wanted to make sure we knew how
different concepts with the same word in English map to Klingon differently
because of this, e.g. "wake up", which is also one of these two-way words
in English, but in Klingon he made sure to point out that "vem" and
"vemmoH" distinguish the meanings. I would NOT say that makes vemmoH an
atomic word in its own right; it's still vem + -moH, and only appears in
the dictionary to show us the power of -moH. Same with poS[moH], Qop[moH],
SoQ[moH]... and quite a few other -moH words that follow related patterns,
like showing us that "teach" is causative learning in Klingon (ghojmoH;
cf. Hebrew lilmod vs. l'lamed, using the same root for both), or that
"remind" is causative remembering (qawmoH) or "recruit" is causative
joining (muvmoH). The same happens to a lesser extent with other suffixes,
like -Ha' and -be' here and there; I don't think you can necessarily say
that a word in the dictionary is ipso facto an atomic root.
Then again, I would accept that some of them may be, and probably
are... and also that there's going to be lots of room to argue over which
is which. We've wondered about ja'chuq a lot, since we so often wish we
could put an object on it. lo'laH seems less than obvious, and HeghmoH may
or may not be, depending on the context. We already know about qa'meH as a
noun (see the list of new words; it's not in the dictionary).
~mark
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