[tlhIngan Hol] -chuqmoH & -'eghmoH

Daniel Dadap daniel at dadap.net
Sat Dec 29 05:45:00 PST 2018


> On Dec 28, 2018, at 9:20 PM, David Holt <kenjutsuka at live.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> From: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol-bounces at lists.kli.org <mailto:tlhingan-hol-bounces at lists.kli.org>> on behalf of Daniel Dadap <daniel at dadap.net <mailto:daniel at dadap.net>>
> Sent: Friday, December 28, 2018 8:44 PM
> To: tlhingan-hol at kli.org <mailto:tlhingan-hol at kli.org>
> Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] -chuqmoH & -'eghmoH
>  
> 
> 
> On Dec 28, 2018, at 17:48, David Holt <kenjutsuka at live.com <mailto:kenjutsuka at live.com>> wrote:
> 
>> How about with {-'eghmoH} to say something/someone makes them do the verb to themself? (Possible example: {puq Say''eghmoH SoS}.)  Any evidence of that sort of construction?
>> 
> > Say''eghmoH SoS makes sense. A mother makes herself clean. The puq as an object there doesn’t. But I guess it does fit the
> > pattern with muvchuqmoH.
> 
> In which case it would mean, "The mother makes the child clean themself."
> 

Right, I understood the intended meaning, but the problem is that -chuq and -‘egh don’t work quite the same, so I’m not sure the same pattern is valid here, assuming that the {-chuqmoH} one was to begin with. {*Say'egh puq} doesn’t make sense, because one cannot be clean one’s self. It has to be {Say'eghmoH puq}. But once you have {Say’eghmoH puq}, how does the {SoS} {-moH} that again?

Building on your example of guards and prisoners (I think you meant {qama’} rather than {jagh}):

{qama’ HoH’eghmoH avwI’}

A guard made a prisoner kill him/herself
or
A guard made him/herself kill a prisoner

This form of {B wot-‘eghmoH A} makes some kind of sense with a transitive verb like {HoH}, but I think it’s a bit weird with a stative verb like {Say’}.

One way this ambiguity can be broken is when {-chuq} is used, and one or the other of the potential verb subjects (including the one that appears in the object position) is singular, since {-chuq} requires a plural subject. Hence {Qo’noS tuqmey muvchuqmoH qeylIS} isn’t ambiguous in the way {qama’pu’ HoHchuqmoH ‘avwI’pu’} is, since there’s only one {qeylIS}, and if the meaning were that he and the houses of Kronos made each other unite, it should have been {muvchuqmoH Qo’noS tuqmey qeylIS je}. Similarly, I think the following two sentences each only have one reading:

{peng Qaw'chuqmoH negh} the soldiers caused each other to destroy the torpedo
{cha Qaw'chuqmoH mang} a soldier caused the torpedoes to destroy each other

I used irregular plurals because I think the subject of a verb with {-chuq} needs to be semantically plural, and not grammatically plural, and to avoid interpretations where a non-explicitly marked plural was actually plural.


>> And how about using {-chuq} with {-moH} to reflexively refer to the subject of {-moH} as also the subject of the main verb, saying that they cause each other to do/be the main verb?  (Possible example: {rIQchuqmoH SuvwI'}.)  Do we have any evidence of that?  What do you think of using it that way?
>> 
> > That seems fine to me if you think of it as rIQmoH with a -chuq, in contrast to thinking of muvchuqmoH as muvchuq with a -moH.
> > I think the dual possibilities are a consequence of the strict ordering of the suffixes.
> 
> It's the {-moH} itself that seems to be causing the dual possibilities.  When we use a {-moH} on a verb that does not have an object, the subject of that verb slides into the object position.  But when we use a {-moH} on a verb that does have an object, the object of that verb stays the object and the subject of that verb apparently gets marked with {-vaD}.  Thus most verbs with {-moH} have at least the potential of two objects.  But since the type 1 suffix does not appear as an actual object, the question is which one of the objects is the type 1 suffix trying to fulfill?
> 

jIQochbe’. What I meant by the possibilities being a consequence is that since the combined suffixes modify the meaning of the verb together, and always occur in the same order, it isn’t immediately clear what the relationship is between the modifications made by each suffix individually. I don’t think it’s limited to the combination of type 1 and type 4: does {jIleghchoHlaH} mean “I am able to begin seeing” or “I begin to be able to see”?

> Jeremy
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