[tlhIngan Hol] qIH and -chuq

SuStel sustel at trimboli.name
Tue Apr 16 11:31:23 PDT 2019


On 4/16/2019 1:55 PM, Alan Anderson wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 1:19 PM SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name 
> <mailto:sustel at trimboli.name>> wrote:
>
>     On 4/16/2019 12:59 PM, Will Martin wrote:
>>     We don’t seem to have a problem with the idea that {jI-} means
>>     the same entity is the subject of causation AND the subject of
>>     being hot, even though there is no explicit explanation of how
>>     this works
>
>     You want to understand?
>
>     Never say the phrase "subject of the causation" again.
>
>     You say it every time, and it's what gets you off track every time.
>
>     How it works is simple. The subject performs whatever the entire
>     verb is. If there is a *-moH* on the verb, then the subject causes
>     something to happen.
>
>
> I don't grasp the distinction you are making between the ideas in 
> "subject of the causation" and "subject [that] causes something to 
> happen". You seem to think it's perfectly clear, but you've never been 
> able to explain why the first phrase is bad and the second one is good.
>
>     Whether the subject performs the action described by the bare verb
>     or any of its other suffixes is a matter of interpretation and
>     context. Someone else might perform the action that is caused by
>     the subject.
>
>
> The someone else you mention would thus be the subject of the action, 
> as opposed to being the subject of the causation, right?

Here we go again. /Subject/ is a term of syntax, applied without any 
consideration to meaning. /Causer, agent, theme,/ and /experiencer/ are 
terms of semantics.

In a sentence without *-moH,* the situation is very simple. The subject 
is always the agent/theme/experiencer. Easy.

In a sentence with *-moH,* the situation requires analysis and attention 
to context. The subject is always the causer, but may or may not be the 
agent, theme, or experiencer. Any objects, whether direct or indirect, 
may or may not be the agent, theme, or experiencer.

To split a Klingon sentence with *-moH* up into "subject of the 
causation" and "subject of the action" is to incorrectly apply 
linguistic terminology to a distinction that may not even exist in a 
given sentence.

In a simple *-moH* sentence like *puq vIQuchmoH,* sure, you could 
imagine this as *Quch puq* and *vI/-cause./* Subject of action, subject 
of cause. Hooray.

This breaks down when you get to sentences like *puqvaD tlhIngan Hol 
vIghojmoH* and *puq vIghojmoH, *not to mention *Qo'noS tuqmey muvchuqmoH 
qeylIS**.* These sentences defy such simple attempts to make Klingon 
syntax into a formula. The "subject of the action" seems to change 
arbitrarily, hence charghwI''s despair. And so I'm telling him to 
jettison his misleading and only-useful-when-it's-easy terminology and 
see the semantics behind what's really going on.


>     There is no formula to determine who that is; you need to figure
>     it out from context and the hints given to you by the verb and its
>     suffixes...
>
>
> Your lengthy analysis sounds to me like a wordier version of "...there 
> is no explicit explanation of how this works."

There ARE explanations, though Okrand has not necessarily laid them all 
out. I've explained them a lot, to the extent that I can. There is no 
simple formula, which is what he wants. He wants verb A --> A verb B, 
and so A verb B --> A5 B verbmoH C, or something like that, that he has 
worked out in his head. He wants a purely syntactic formula to follow. 
Klingon doesn't work like that.

But there ARE patterns. We know that when A causes B to act on C, 
*B**vaD C VmoH A.* When A causes no one in particular to act on C, *C 
VmoH A.* When A causes B to act on nothing in particular, *B VmoH A.* 
These are simple enough to follow, and he can repeat them, but charghwI' 
doesn't really understand WHY they are the way they are. Continuing to 
say things like "the subject of the causation" just demonstrates this 
lack of understanding.

We also have indications that the rule of type 1 verb suffixes requiring 
no-object prefixes only applies when the prefix isn't agreeing with 
something other than the reflexive parties. And this makes sense if we 
consider that the suffixes, fixed in place as they are, are incapable of 
telling us which entities they belong to in a sentence with *-moH.*

"No explicit explanation of how this works" is true only in the sense 
that Okrand hasn't announced how all this stuff works. But as linguistic 
descriptivists — right? — we look at what he's written and deduce the 
rules. We have quite a lot of data on this. We can craft explanations. 
There are admittedly imperfect, and can be refined or overruled with the 
discovery of, or new understanding of, new data, but they are 
nevertheless explanations.

When TKD came out, we all managed to figure out the rule that when you 
take a sentence like *Quch puq,* and you add *-moH* to say that I caused 
this to happen, you make *puq* the object. /THERE IS NO EXPLANATION OF 
THIS ANYWHERE IN TKD. /We simply deduced the rules.

So we can flail about helplessly with no syntactic formula for *-moH* 
given to us by Okrand, or we can deduce the rules and why they are what 
they are. Which is what we've been doing all along.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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