tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Mar 28 11:23:17 2004

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RE: Using object prefixes with "intransitive" verbs

De'vID jonwI' ([email protected]) 

De'vID:
>>Well "wait (for)" and "expect" aren't necessarily the same.   You can
>>certainly expect something without waiting for it, and wait for
>>something without expecting it.

QeS lagh:
>But you *can* wait for something by expecting it. It doesn't have to be 
>that
>way, but that's one of the connotations I see behind the English word.

Right.  Perhaps *most* of the time, "wait" and "expect" overlap.
But that's not necessarily so.

De'vID:
>><HuchwIj vIloS> "I'm waiting for my money"
>><HuchwIj vIpIH> "I'm expecting my money"
>>In the first case, my money may come at some indefinite point in
>>the future, but I may not have any expectation of getting it any
>>time soon.  In the second case, I may believe that my money will
>>be deposited in my mailbox soon, but I may not be sitting by my
>>mailbox waiting for it.

QeS lagh:
>To be honest, I can't quite see the difference semantically. While I don't
>disbelieve you, could you explain your reasoning? I'm just a little
>confused, that's all.

<Godot wIloS> "We're waiting for Godot"
<Godot wIpIH> "We're expecting Godot"

In the first case, we're standing by a tree looking for things
to do to pass our time while waiting for the arrival of Godot,
which is foremost in our concerns.  We may still be waiting for
Godot even though we harbour doubts that he will ever show up
(i.e. we might not expect him to show up).

In the second case, we anticipate that he will show up, but
we may not have stopped everything else to wait for him.  We're
going about our own business, until he shows up.

De'vID:
>><pIloS> "We're waiting for you"
>><pIpIH> "We're expecting you"
>>If the hotel manager says the first sentence, it sounds like they've
>>actually been standing there waiting for you.  Perhaps you said you'd
>>show up at some time and you were late.   If he says the second
>>sentence, as they do on the CK tape, then they know you're coming,
>>but it's not as if they've stopped everything else to await your
>>arrival.

QeS lagh:
>I must disagree in this case. Correct me if I'm wrong, but at the end of
>"Mary Poppins", when George Banks is summoned to the bank to answer to the
>bank's manager, doesn't the bank manager say "We've been expecting you"?
>Whether that's the case or not, that's what I picture when I hear {pIpIH}.
>:D In that case, it was late at night when the meeting of the bank's
>partners was convened; they didn't appear to have any other purpose than
>waiting for George Banks. In this situation, I wouldn't have any problem
>with either {pIpIH} or {pIloS}.

Right, in this instance they were both waiting and expecting him.
I'm not saying that the meanings of "wait" and "expect" don't
overlap, I'm saying that they don't *necessarily* overlap.  There
are instances where one does one but not the other.

I think SuStel's explanation expressed what I wanted to explain
much more clearly:

SuStel:
>I would guess that the Klingon says /pIpIH/ instead of /pIloS/ because no
>one was actually waiting for anything.  "Wait" implies inactivity prior to
>some event; "expect" implies anticipation, but not inactivity.  The Klingon
>desk clerk wasn't "waiting for" the tourist, twiddling his thumbs, but he
>was "expecting" him.

That was basically what I was trying to explain using my examples.

QeS lagh:
>If I understand this correctly, it's not so far from my examples:
>{yatlh; be'Hom loS} "She's pregnant; she's waiting for a girl"
>{yatlh; be'Hom pIH} "She's pregnant; she's expecting a girl"
>
>In the second case, it still seems to me like the unnamed woman *suspects*
>she's going to have a girl because the doctor told her so. That's how I 
>read
>"expect" in this case. In fact, she could get a nasty surprise and find out
>that the baby's a boy when she has it.
>
>Whichever way, I still think that there are some situations where {loS} and
>{pIH} overlap. It might help if we knew whether {pIH} "expect" was
>etymologically related to {pIH} "be suspicious", or if the two were merely
>homophones.

Well, <pIH> "expect" and <pIH> "be suspicious" are listed as
separate entries, aren't they?  If they were the same word, I
would have expected a definition like <pIH> "expect, be suspicious
(of)".  Besides, "expect" appears to be transitive while "be
suspicious" appears to be intransitive.  Therefore I would tend
to think that they're two separate words that happen to sound
alike, absent other evidence.

Now the question is whether the object of "be suspicious" is the
thing that causes suspicion ("This package is suspicious") or
the thing that habours a suspicion ("The mailman is suspicious
(i.e. of the package)".

--
De'vID

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