tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Mar 11 15:50:55 1999
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Re: -moH Curiousity {was Re: deep structures}
ter'eS wrote:
: I understand your first example, /puq ghojmoH qup/ as 'The elder causes
: (someone) to learn the child'. /puq/ stands in DO position, but is not
: a sensible object of /ghojmoH/. It also offends my understanding of how
this
: construction works to see /puq/ performing the same role in two different
: sentences (as the beneficiary of the action of teaching), but in one
: case with a suffix and in the other without.
Offensive or not, it may be exactly how this verb works. Okrand has always
said that he was trying to create a natural-feeling language, not
necessarily a perfectly logical one without any irregularities or surprises.
: Here is my reasoning: in the simple sentence /Hol ghoj puq/, the language
: is the object of /ghoj/; it is the thing being learned. Adding /-moH/ to
: the verb doesn't change this; the object of /ghoj/ remains the thing
: being "caused to be learned". The object doesn't change to the person
: being "caused to learn". To express that new role, MO has shown us that
: we must use the suffix /-vaD/: /puqvaD Hol ghojmoH qup/. These
: relationships hold true even if the direct object isn't expressed:
: /puqvaD ghojmoH qup/ 'The elder teaches the child'. The difference
: between this and your first example is that your example makes the child
: the information being imparted, while in mine, the child is the one
: receiving (unspecified) information. In English, we can use the same
: sentence for both ideas, but in Klingon, they're different.
Possibly. However, checking my notes I realized that, outside of the noun
{ghojmeH taj} "boy's knife" (lit. "knife for learning"), Okrand has never
used {ghoj} "learn" and used {ghojmoH} "teach, instruct" in just one
expression, with and without a Type 7 suffix:
batlh qaghojmoHpu'.
It has been an honor to instruct you. CK
batlh qaghojmoH.
It has been an honor to instruct you. PK
Judging by *solely by canon*, we know for certain that the direct object of
{ghojmoH} is the person instructed or taught, NOT the information being
imparted. This may be why he added "instruct" to the definition in TKD:
Whereas in English we can say "I teach children", "I teach mathematics" or
even "I teach the children mathematics" or "I teach mathematics to the
children", we can only say "I instruct the children". *"I instruct
mathematics" is ungrammatical. To talk about the information being
imparted, we have to rephrase this: e.g. "I am a mathematics instructor".
So, as of now we don't actually know whether
?tlhIngan Hol vIghojmoH
I teach Klingon
?puqpu'vaD tlhIngan Hol vIghojmoH
I teach the children Klingon
?batlh tlhIngan Hol qaghojmoHpu'
It has been an honor to teach you Klingon (using the "prefix trick")
are grammatical or not. I hope they are since I have used {ghojmoH} this
way myself on occasion, but now I'm not so sure. Even the Ca'Non Master is
sometimes startled by what he finds!
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons