[tlhIngan Hol] muvchuqmoH. seriously ?

Rhona Fenwick qeslagh at hotmail.com
Thu Jul 28 21:28:55 PDT 2016


jIjatlhpu' jIH:
> if the bare verb was univalent to begin with (i.e. couldn't normally take
> an object, like {Qong}, {QaQ}), then the derivative with {-'eghmoH}
> probably cannot take an object either. How would one shoehorn an
> explicit object into, say, {bel'eghmoH} "please oneself"?

mujangpu' SuStel, jatlh:
> It's not a question of valency, it's a question of syntactic roles. What is
> having something done to it? That's your object.

jIjatlhqa'pu' jIH:
> I think we're saying the same thing in two different ways. The two
> agreement slots of a verb (and thus its valency) correspond to the
> syntactic roles of subject and object in any case.
> All I'm getting at is that the way {-'egh} and {-moH} together affect
> the structure of verb agreement (and therefore syntactic roles)
> should imply that if you can't add an object to a bare verb {X}, you
> probably can't add one to the verb {X-'eghmoH} either. Do you disagree?

jang SuStel, jatlh:
> I believe I disagree. If I wanted to say I cause the Klingon to please
> himself, that could be tlhIngan vIbel'eghmoH jIH.

I won't rehash this, as ghunchu'wI' has already pointed out that this is problematic.

jatlhtaH:
> These suffixes cause only semantic changes.

That's not true. {-'egh} doesn't cause a syntactic change per se, requiring only a morphological change in agreement, but {-moH} adds a semantic role to the root verb and forces both syntactic and morphological changes as a result.

taH:
> Whatever meaning the suffixes add to the verb, it still takes one
> subject that is the performer of the verb and one object that is the
> performee of the verb.

Assuming, as you said earlier, that an object can be provided to a given verb. What's the object of {Doq'eghmoH}?

taH:
> If you want to go through a rigamarole of valences and transitivity
> and so on, have fun. I feel confident Okrand wasn't thinking about
> those things; he was thinking of syntax.

Well, Marc is a trained linguist and so I won't dismiss the possibility he was thinking about both, but that's a moot point. In either case, I don't appreciate your dismissive tone here. I'm not intending to do anything with these terms other than find useful ways to describe what's going on, just as you are.

taH:
> You specifically challenged whether the sentences showed anything
> exceptional or new, and that's what I responded to. It's exceptional
> in that it explicitly violates two rules about -chuq, whatever the
> justification. It's new in that no one ever said anything about it before.

But we have! I raised this example back in 2012 when we were going over similar issues about {-'eghmoH} as it relates to {tuQ} (http://www.kli.org/tlhIngan-Hol/2012/February/msg00069.html), and several of us, including you, discussed that example explicitly at that time. For some reason your messages on the topic are not saved to the KLI list archives, but a couple others (one replying directly to you) still exist:

http://www.kli.org/tlhIngan-Hol/2012/February/msg00077.html
http://www.kli.org/tlhIngan-Hol/2012/February/msg00081.html

The thread was called, ironically, "Semantic roles with -moH... again".

QeS 'utlh
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