tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Nov 05 17:26:45 2005

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

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

Stephen A. Carter ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

On Fri, 04 Nov 2005 09:47:37 -0600, Steven Boozer wrote:
>Stephen Carter wrote:
>>How reasonable would it be to consider {mojmoH} a synonym of {chenmoH}?

>*{mojmoH} has never been used, so let's look at the canon for some 
>clues.

[snip]

>Note that the object of {chenmoH} is usually an thing - although note the 
>{tIjwI'ghom} example - but the object of {moj} is a person or an 
>office/title of a person.  My feeling is that *{mojmoH} would be closer to 
>"appoint" than a synonym for {chenmoH} "build, make, create, form".  E.g.

You make a strong case (which the use of {chen} and not {moj} in
arithmetic mentioned in this thread also seems to support).

On Sat, 05 Nov 2005 11:57:46 +1000, QeS la' wrote:
>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.

You lost me.  As far as I understand, the only transitive use of
"become" in English is when it has the sense of "suit" or "be
suitable to," as in "Mourning Becomes Electra."  By "intransitive,"
do you mean usage without a predicate?  If so, I can't think of an
example (*"It becomes.")

>As such, a pronoun-as-verb plus 
>{-choH} is probably synonymous with the various forms of {moj},

That's interesting -- I hadn't thought of that.

>but 
>{chenmoH} and {mojmoH} are very likely not synonyms.

Okay, I'm convinced.  Until new canon shows otherwise, I'll assume
that {moj} is used only with people, and that {mojmoH} isn't
synonymous with {chenmoH}, but may be synonymous with pronoun +
{-choH}.


-- Stephen Carter
   [email protected]
   Nagoya, Japan

Back to archive top level