tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Mar 09 15:13:44 1999
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Re: chaq tugh jImej.
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: chaq tugh jImej.
- Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 18:12:46 EST
ja' charghwI' 'utlh:
> {targhvaD Qa'Hom vISopmoH.} ...So far there are
> three different interpretations of the sentence. One group (so
> far as I know, only me) think it definitely means that the targ
> eats the Qa'Hom.
I think so too.
> A second group (mostly Krankor) believes that
> the Qa'Hom definitely eats, but the targ mysteriously benefits
> from this. There's no way the Qa'Hom is being eaten. A third
> group (you [ghunchu'wI'] were the first to express this) thinks that it is
> ambiguous. Either meaning could be true. Context dictates what
> is happening.
>
> I don't think it is ambiguous. Neither does Krankor.
>
> And THAT is the problem.
...
> And none of the camps think there is any
> doubt that that camp alone is correct. There is no vague sense
> that this is perhaps unclear.
I think it's unclear.
> When I see {ghojmoH}, I don't think the word "teach". I think
> "cause to learn".
That's the unclarity. And the exact same thing happens with
...tuQtaHvIS Hem. ghaHvaD quHDaj qawmoH.
..He wears it proudly as a reminder of his heritage. Skybox card S20
We've been thinking of it as "It makes him remember his heritage", but it
could just as easily be translated as "It recalls his heritage to him."
That's parallel to
puqpu'vaD mI'mey ghojmoH qup.
The elder teaches numbers to the children.
Many Earth languages have a causative grammatical gadget that does things like
this. Often the meaning of the resulting verb is somewhat different from
the literal "cause to (X)". That appears to be a feature, not a bug.
Examples: sometimes there's no verb for "show" except the causative of "see";
no word for "sell" except the causative of "buy".
In fact, languages very often have two or more different causative
constructions producing different meanings, sometimes more literal and
sometimes more altered; and they change the functions of the nouns in
different ways.
An example from French (in "Grammatical Roles and Relations", by F. R. Palmer,
page 222):
J'ai fait nettoyer les toilettes au général.
I had the general clean the toilets.
J'ai fait nettoyer les toilettes par le général.
I had the toilets cleaned by the general .
One is doing something to the general (we could also say "I made the general
clean the toilets"); the other is doing something to the toilets (we could
also say "I got the toilets clean, using the general").
--jey'el