[tlhIngan Hol] Thoughts on {-moH}

[Ed Bailey]

On Tue, Dec 6, 2016 at 1:41 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:

>
> The current thinking, supported by a couple of canonical sentences, seems
> to be that your desired sentence would be: *SoHvaD raS vIyuvmoH.*
>
> My explanation for this is that one must do more than blindly follow
> syntax; one must examine the semantic role each noun is playing. There is
> an action, *yuv.* Someone pushes the table, *raS yuv.* I cause the table
> to be pushed, *raS vIyuvmoH* (doesn't say who pushes it; I cause the
> action so I'm the subject and it's done to the table so the table is the
> object). I cause you to push it, *SoHvaD raS vIyuvmoH;* you're the
> receiver of what I did (cause the pushing).
>

This is something I puzzled over for quite a while: what role is played by
the object of a transitive verb plus *-moH*? In the case of *raS vIyuvmoH*,
obviously the table isn't doing the pushing. But in the second example of
this type of construction in TKD, *HIQoymoH *<let me hear (something)>, the
object is the speaker, who would be the one doing the hearing. So in some
cases in which there is only an object without a Type 5 suffix, the object
can assume either role unambiguously despite the apparent lack of a fixed
grammatical rule to determine it, just as in English one can say both "She
teaches French" and "She teaches the children." Of course, since both types
of object are frequently required, as in "She teaches the children French,"
I was delighted when I learned about the *-vaD*/*-moH* construction.

But here's a question about *HIQoymoH*: what if you meant to say <let me be
heard> instead? Depending on context, couldn't you use the same expression?
Alternatively, my first instinct is just to avoid the whole *-moH* problem
and say *vIQoylu' 'e' yIchaw'*. Or are there better ways to say <let me be
heard>?

Here's another question: can* -vaD* always work with *-moH* on a transitive
verb to make an unambiguous sentence? Is the noun plus *-vaD* always going
to be that which is made to do something, or could it still be the
beneficiary of the action, as with *nob*?* To expand on the example from
TKD, might you construe *beqvaD HIQoymoH* as <let the crew hear me> or <let
me hear for the crew> or both? (My expectation is that a sentence using the
*-vaD*/*-moH* construction is likely to be ambiguous out of context, but
since it's a known construction, the favored interpretation is that the
noun with *-vaD* performs the action of the verb, and that context would
make it clear in almost any case.)

~mIp'av

*Obviously there's no way to add *-moH* to the sentence *torghvaD taj nob
matlh* to make Kruge cause Maltz to give Torg the knife. Or is there?
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