tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Mar 27 10:27:44 1999
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Re: choH
[HIvHe yIchoHmoH! - Alter the attack course! (ST5)]
ja' Voragh:
>Klaa's line in ST5 was pretty clear, but Okrand does seem to treat it as
>transitive elsewhere. At the risk of building another house of cards and
>invoking the wrath of SuStel et al., one could speculate that in colloquial
>or excited speech (such as during a battle), using {-moH} on the already
>transitive {choH} adds an intensifying force, particularly in the
>imperative. In this case, Klaa may be stressing that he wanted his
>helmsman to CHANGE the ship's course and *not* stay "steady on course".
There's no payoff in "speculating" like this. It was a highly stressful
and time-critical moment in the movie anyway, so it would have been very
odd for Klaa to add suffixes for careful effect. The appropriate suffix
in this case would have been {-choH}, not {-moH}, but {yIchoH} *already*
quite clearly means "change".
I'll note that there's another example of a course change which also has
a {-moH}. TKD page 45: {maghoSchoHmoHneS'a'} "may we execute a course?"
But I don't see any pattern here.
>An analogous example might be the use of double negatives in English.
That's a reasonable thought. Almost everyone understands them, even while
recognizing that they are substandard grammar and not good examples for a
student of English to emulate. Putting a superfluous {-moH} on an already
transitive verb could be one of the "common errors" like leaving off {lu-}
(or it could be something else entirely).
-- ghunchu'wI'