tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 23 12:23:20 2009
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Re: The topic marker -'e'
ghunchu'wI' 'utlh wrote:
>> Oh for heaven's ... I am considering it a simple verb, a simple verb
>> of state or quality. "ghung puq" doesn't have an agent either.
>
> So if verbs of "action" have agents, verbs of "quality" have...what?
> They're both subjects. That's all I need to care about, so far as I
> know.
Not all verbs of action have agents. For instance:
bom Qoy puq
the child hears the song
puq = experiencer
bom = theme
To be an agent, the noun must intentionally perform the action. This
means that mindless forces are not agents (they are "forces").
qoH pummoH SuS
the wind knocks over the fool
SuS = force
qoH = patient
Verbs of quality will probably have experiencer subjects, though I
haven't surveyed all of them to find exceptions:
Quch puq
the child is happy
puq = experiencer
Why should you care about semantics and thematic relations? There are a
number of situations that depend on them. For instance, we didn't
originally know whether the subject of {ghor} "break" was an agent or a
patient. When we got TKW, we learned {pIpyuS puS DaghornIS} "you need to
break a few pippiuses," which meant that {ghor} took an agent subject.
Some verbs have been shown to have subjects with multiple semantic
roles: the subject of {mev} "stop" can be an agent (bIjatlh 'e' yImev)
or a patient (not mev peghmey).
And of course, the use of Type 5 suffixes is not purely syntactic, as we
can see from examples of {-'e'} and {-Daq} on subjects or objects. The
syntactic object of {Duj wIghoS} "we approach the ship" has a semantic
role of "theme," but in {DujDaq wIghoS} "we approach the ship
(redundant)," it seems to have the role of "goal." And this is yet
different than {DujDaq maghoS} "we go on/in the ship," in which {DujDaq}
is the syntactic locative, not an object at all, and is the semantic
"location."
I'll bet there are even more reasons to look at Klingon semantics. It is
a little-studied area.
In syntax, when one says that the subject is the thing which does the
action of the verb, we only mean that in a general way. It only applies
to the words *without regard to their meanings*. You could say, with
English syntax, "a floogle argarelled the huws"; it's a syntactically
valid sentence; you know which words are the subject, object, and verb;
you know it has past tense and that one thing did something to multiple
things—specifically, you know which thing did what do which other
things—and yet, despite all this syntactic knowledge, you have
absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. You might say, "Ah, well, the
floogle is obviously the agent of the sentence." Really? What if I told
you that "argarel" means "be hungry for something"? Suddenly the floogle
is the experiencer, not the agent. Sure, the subject performs the action
of the verb upon the object, but that doesn't *mean* anything in the
real world until the semantics are understood.
--
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