tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 04 17:58:01 2005

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Re: chenmoH/mojmoH (was Re: Klingon WOTD: cho' (verb))

QeS la' ([email protected])



ghItlhpu' Stephen Carter, ja':

>How reasonable would it be to consider {mojmoH} a synonym of {chenmoH}?

I wouldn't use the two interchangeably. {mojmoH} I would translate as 
"appoint, change into", whereas {chenmoH} is more "make (something), create, 
build".

Really, the English "become" has two senses: the intransitive, non-copular 
sense meaning "to come into existence", and the transitive, copular sense 
meaning, well, "to become" or "to begin to be". If Klingon {moj} could refer 
to the first sense, then yes, I guess {chenmoH} and {mojmoH} would be 
synonyms, but as Voragh has shown, {moj} in Klingon has never been used in 
anything other than a transitive sense. As such, a pronoun-as-verb plus 
{-choH} is probably synonymous with the various forms of {moj}, but 
{chenmoH} and {mojmoH} are very likely not synonyms.

jang Voragh:
>How this would work with a double object - i.e. with a name as well as a 
>title - is a bit tricky.

For the S25 example "Gowron was named leader of the High Council by Jean-Luc 
Picard", I'd topicalise "Gowron", and put it this way:

ghawran'e' yejquv DevwI' mojmoH janluq pIqarD HoD
"As for Gowron, Captain Jean-Luc Picard caused (him) to become leader of the 
High Council"

primarily going by the semantic function of the passive in English, which is 
to emphasise the object and/or de-emphasise the subject. Nevertheless, I 
still think we need more guidance from Maltz on the syntax of how one 
causativises transitive verbs, particularly since there are verbs like 
{pong} "to call, to name" that also seem to require two direct objects.

Savan,

QeS la'
taghwI' pabpo' / Beginners' Grammarian


not nItoj Hemey ngo' juppu' ngo' je
(Old roads and old friends will never deceive you)
     - Ubykh Hol vIttlhegh

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