tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Mar 11 13:38:05 1997

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Re: more on -moH qororvo'



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>Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 20:48:15 -0800 (PST)
>From: "HurghwI'" <[email protected]>
>
>jatlh ~mark:
>>[...]
>>All of which is rather beside the point.  Klingon does NOT have a true
>>passive.  It just and simply doesn't.  It has an impersonal, which can
>>serve a similar function, but grammatically it remains an active voice: the
>>object remains grammatically an object, it remains in the object place, and
>>doesn't get promoted to subject (as the book did when it "was eaten" by the
>>targ).  Even "be honored", which *is* actually a passive construction in
>>English (Jack honors Jill / Jill is honored [by Jack]) is just that:
>>passive IN ENGLISH.  In Klingon it is as active as "be happy" or "be flat":
>>it indicates a state of being.
>
>I see, I was confusing passive with stative. But, couldn't "The apple was
>eaten" be stative? The apple is in a state of being eaten, right?

There is a certain room for confusion, but since active and passive are
defined in terms of the language in question, we need to look at the what
the language does.  English has the verb "to eat" which in passive would be
"to be eaten", and so "the apple is eaten" is a passive construction in
English.  But "the book is falling" is actually an active statement (not
even stative or middle: the book is actively falling.  The only reason for
the "is" there is because we happen to be speaking in present progressive);
there's no way you can turn this back into an "active" sentence from being
passive; it already is active.  And "the table is flat" merely uses "is" to
join a noun and an adjective.  Another way to think of it: if you can add
"... by someone/something" to the sentence, it's probably passive.  "The
apple is eaten... by the targ."  But you can't say "The table is flat by
the hammer" or "the book is falling by the ball" or even "The landing party
takes form by the captain."  At least, you can, but it's a completely
different kind of "by" which we're not dealing with now; don't let that
distract you.

It's important to deal in the language in question; that's why I say that
"quv HoD"/"the captain is honored" is not passive in Klingon.  It *is*
passive in English, because "to be honored" is the passive form of the verb
"to honor" in English.  But Klingon has no passive.  The verb "quv" is as
active a verb as any other; the most you can say is that it's stative.  It
simply indicates a state of affairs, and its subject is just that: its
subject, not the object of some other form of the verb that got promoted to
subject by passivizing.  You can use -moH to make it work causatively,
which is in some ways the reverse of passivizing, but that's something
else.

~mark

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