[tlhIngan Hol] What Maltz does: {'otHa'}

[kechpaja]

On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 01:38:20PM -0400, SuStel wrote:
> On 9/28/2017 1:26 PM, André Müller wrote:
> > I think ambitransitive isn't the right word here. Ambitransitive verbs 
> > can be intransitive or transitive, like {Soj vISop} vs. {jISop}. This 
> > one reminds me more of Chinese and Thai in which some verbs are their 
> > own causative verb. But I cannot remember the correct term for this 
> > type of verb...

You're right; I used the wrong terminology. That's definitely what I was
thining about though. 
> >
> > - André
> >
> > 2017-09-28 19:21 GMT+02:00 kechpaja <kechpaja at comcast.net 
> > <mailto:kechpaja at comcast.net>>:
> >
> >     On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 05:06:45PM +0000, Steven Boozer wrote:
> >     > SEE ALSO:
> >     > pegh          keep something secret, be secret, classified (v)
> >
> >     Wait, does this mean that {pegh} is ambitransitive? Klingon seems to
> >     have very few verbs of that type, so I figure it would be worth
> >     explicitly checking.
> >
> Whatever the verb is, we've got a few of them in Klingon.
> 
> *tagh*
> 
>     *taghbej mu'qaDveS
>     */Curse warfare has definitely begun. /(CK)
> 
>     *Qu' DataghDI' 'aqtu' mellota' je tIqaw*/
>     When you begin a mission, remember Aktuh and Melota. /(TKW)
> 
> *mev*
> 
>     *not mev peghmey
>     */Secrets never cease. /(PK)
> 
>     *bIjatlh 'e' yImev
>     */Shut up!/ (PK)
> 
> *meQ*
> 
>     *Ha'DIbaHmey meQ Sop 'e' tIv tera'nganpu'
>     */Terrans enjoy eating burnt animals./ (CK, but notice the missing
>     *lu-* on *tIv*)
> 
>     *to'waQ meQ vutwI'
>     */The cook burns the tendon./ (KGT)
> 
> And you've noticed *pegh.* There may be others I can't remember right 
> now. There are also a lot of verbs whose transitivity we don't know, 
> like *DIng* /spin /and *chagh*/drop./
> 
> And maybe, just maybe, Klingons aren't quite so rigorous with their 
> transitivity as we are.

As languages go, English is actually pretty loose with transitivity,
especially with the sorts of verbs that André referred to. There's no
reason Klingon couldn't also be that loose, but the presence of an
explicit causative marker makes me want it to be stricter, since marking
the transitive variants of these sorts of verbs would be so easy. Of
course, that doesn't mean that it has to work that way, and it seems
that it probably doesn't. 

 - SapIr