[tlhIngan Hol] Clarification on SIch

Will Martin willmartin2 at mac.com
Wed Apr 10 10:55:00 PDT 2019


My old argument about this, when we were figuring out how {vIH} worked, was that we had a better mechanism for converting an intransitive interpretation with {-moH} to make it transitive than we had for converting a transitive interpretation (with {-egh} perhaps?) into an intransitive meaning, since things that move are not necessarily caused to move by themselves.

Then, of course, Okrand had to come up with things {-eghmoH}ing. [sigh]

Maybe I should have stuck with French as a second language...

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.

> On Apr 10, 2019, at 12:48 PM, Ed Bailey <bellerophon.modeler at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 11:44 AM Felix Malmenbeck <felixm at kth.se <mailto:felixm at kth.se>> wrote:
> 
> We have seen some Klingon words that show a similar type of ambitransitive alternation (ghom, choH, mev), and I'm sure others exist, but from an in-universe perspective, there's not much reason to infer that a Klingon verb is an alternating ambitransitive based on whether or not its English gloss is.
> 
> It seems this behavior is seen in Klingon verbs like meQ, where -moH is sometimes dropped. Perhaps this happens due to your out-of-universe explanation, but an in-universe explanation would be the desire for brevity, combined with pragmatics.
> 
> chabHom bal qoDDaq ghopwIj vISIchmoH I make my hand reach into the cookie jar, or maybe better ghopwIjvaD chabHom bal qoD vISIchmoH would be a safe construction, assuming the body part or implement can be the subject of SIch, 
> 
> On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 12:01 PM De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com <mailto:de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, 10 Apr 2019 at 16:37, Ed Bailey <bellerophon.modeler at gmail.com <mailto:bellerophon.modeler at gmail.com>> wrote:
> Here are two more things about SIch I'd like clarified.
> Can it be used with the body part or implement as its object? ?chabHom bal qoD[Daq] ghopwIj vISIch I reach my hand into the cookie jar.
> 
> Did someone cut off your hand and put it into a cookie jar, and are you retrieving it (presumably with your other hand)? I read this as "In the cookie jar, I reach my hand."
> 
> I'd cite this as an example of the deliberate disuse of pragmatics: resolving ambiguity by following a strict usage rule rather than choosing the most likely possibility as the speaker's intent. Klingons do have some strict usage rules, to be sure, and I'm not saying Klingons actually use SIch this way - it was a question - but Klingons do need pragmatics in order to communicate effectively, which in turn can inform usage. I doubt one Klingon would deliberately misunderstand  the other simply because of dropping the -moH for brevity, unless there was a reason for strictness (like the case of the missing Oxford comma in the labor contract https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html>).
> 
> ~mIp'av
> 
>  
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