[tlhIngan Hol] qIH and -chuq

SuStel sustel at trimboli.name
Tue Apr 16 17:46:01 PDT 2019


On 4/16/2019 5:13 PM, Alan Anderson wrote:
> On Apr 16, 2019, at 2:31 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name 
> <mailto:sustel at trimboli.name>> wrote:
>
>> In a sentence without *-moH,* the situation is very simple. The 
>> subject is always the agent/theme/experiencer. Easy.
>
> “Easy”? You’re introducing terms that you seem to think are widely 
> understood, but your use of them doesn’t give much information about 
> what you mean.

Tell me you're interested in learning about how semantics works. You 
give me a genuine, honest effort to understand it and I'll spend my time 
telling you about it. But your past behavior on this topic suggests to 
me that you're uninterested in talking about it. You've got what you've 
already decided, and you don't care to know anything else.


> From your earlier attempts to explain your understanding of Klingon 
> grammar, I was under the impression that agents and experiencers were 
> different things, and I thought themes were something else as well. 
> Searching the web, I find lists of noun roles that include those 
> terms, and nowhere do I see them equated.

I didn't equate them. Those are alternative roles that the subject 
regularly plays in Klingon.

*HoD vIqIp*/I hit the captain./ I am the agent. I deliberately take an 
action.

*chal vIlegh*/I see the sky. /I am the experiencer. I receive sensory or 
emotional input.

I am the subject of both sentences, but my semantic role is different.

(And I erroneously said /theme/ when I meant to say /force./ But I 
wasn't listing exclusive possibilities, just possible alternatives.)

Like I said, if you genuinely want an honest discussion of this, I'm 
happy to oblige, but I don't think you are. I think you just want to 
accuse me of something.


> I still don’t understand the problem you have with calling the thing 
> that causes the action the “subject of causation”. You tried to 
> correct it by saying that “the subject causes”.  What’s the line you 
> are drawing between them?

"The subject causes" is not a correction of the phrase "subject of 
causation." My problem with the phrase that "subject" is a purely 
syntactic term. In Klingon, the "subject" is simply that argument of a 
verb that comes after the verb, with which the verb prefix must agree. A 
Klingon subject is not always the entity that performs the action 
described by the verb; sometimes it causes that action instead. The 
problem is the splitting of the sentence into "subject of causation" and 
"subject of action." There is only ONE subject, and the verb prefix 
ALWAYS agrees with it, no matter what role that subject is playing. And 
if you go looking for multiple subjects tucked away inside words that 
aren't the subject, you get the grammar wrong. Because if you've got a 
"subject of causation" and a "subject of action," you're going to try to 
PUT those subjects somewhere, and you're going to try to make the verb 
prefix account for them. But they shift. Apparently for no reason. 
Actually, there ARE reasons, but you can't see if them if you're stuck 
on "subject."


-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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