[tlhIngan Hol] Klingon Word of the Day: mev

[De'vID]

On Fri, 23 Aug 2019 at 16:30, Felix Malmenbeck <felixm at kth.se> wrote:

> > This was translated by Lieven. I believe the use of {mev} here is an
> error, and should've been {mevmoH}.
>
> {mev} can take an object, so it works. {bIjatlh 'e' yImev} is in both TKD
> and PK.
>
{bIjatlh 'e' yImev} only works because the person being ordered to stop is
the person who is talking. In the case of a person pausing a device, the
person is not the one who is ceasing.


> {mev} also appears six times in paq'batlh, and takes {'e'} as an object
> each time.
>
And in every instance, the subject of {mev} is the subject of the sentence
which is its object. {mev} is appropriate, and {mevmoH} is not, in each of
those six cases because the subject is not causing someone or something
else to stop.


> There is also the sentence {not mev peghmey} from PK. It could be that
> this {mev} could be given an explicit object, such as
> {not {vIH/vI'/chuS/leng/bogh/vuQ} 'e' lumev peghmev}, or it could be that
> {mev} has a homonymous intransitive form that is similar to {Dor}.
>
I had thought {mev} might've been similar to {meQ}, which can mean both
"burn, be burning" and "burn, cause something burn". That is, {mev} could
mean both "stop, be in cessation or at an end" and "stop, cause something
to be in cessation or at an end". The latter meaning is how it's used in
Hamlet and Netflix.

But after looking at the canon examples, canon seems to only support the
former usage, even in the instances where {mev} takes an object. "Secrets
never cease" means "secrets are never in a state of cessation or at an
end". Even if we modified the sentence to be {vIH not 'e' mev peghmey} or
{vIH peghmey not 'e' mev}, it would still only mean "secrets (themselves)
never cease moving", not "secrets never stop something else from moving",
"secrets never cease to move something else". I think that would be
{mevmoH}.

I think the definition "stop, cease" supports this. While "stop" can mean
both "be in cessation" or "cause to be in cessation", "cease" only means
the former. You can stop talking, you can cease talking, and you can stop
someone else's talking, but you can't cease someone else's talking. You
have to cause ({-moH}) someone else to cease talking.

-- 
De'vID
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/attachments/20190823/43326636/attachment-0002.htm>