tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 30 06:13:12 1997
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Re: peDtaH 'ej jIQuch
>Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 12:53:10 -0800 (PST)
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>
>According to Alan Anderson:
>>
>> ja' charghwI':
>> >jIQoch. vay' tlhuHmoH ghu'. ghu'mo' tlhuHlu'.
>> >
>> >"It caused him to be afraid." 'e' Daqaw'a'? "It causes one to be
>> >exhillerated." 'e' DaHar'a'? tlhuHmoHlu', qar'a'?
>>
>> We lack immediately understandable words for "subject" and "object", so
>> I'll give my grammatical justification in English.
>>
>> I intend {tlhuHmoH} to mean "it exhilarates" with no object. Not merely
>> an indefinite one, but none at all. The subject is supposed to be "it",
>> referring to the previously elucidated situation.
>
>I feel quite unsure that this is a possible expression in
>Klingon. {-moH} implies that something is the subject of the
>action which is being caused. I know of no other setting
>(except perhaps certain useage of {-meH}) in which there is no
>subject on a verb. There may be no object, and the subject may
>be indefinite, but otherwise, each verb needs a subject, and
>with {-moH} there are TWO subjects, since causation is itself
>an implied verb. One entity is subject of the causation and the
>other entity is the subject of the action of the verb.
I don't really see a problem with this, any more than with {maSop}. -moH
makes a verb transitive, meaning that the subject acts on something with
the result of performing the action. Just as {Sop}, strictly speaking,
*requires* that something be eaten, but we can say {maSop} anyway, implying
that indeed, though things are eaten, they're unspecified and just "in
general", we should also be able to say, e.g. {SeymoH} for "exciting".
That is, whatever this thingy is, it causes stuff in general to be
excited. I see what charghwI' is saying, that this elides a subject, but I
don't really see it that way. The object of -moH really is an object: the
class of the verb is altered by the suffix. It seems to me that if we can
say {maSop} we can say {jISeymoH} (assuming THAT were true).
~mark