[tlhIngan Hol] tuQ and tuQmoH difference

[SuStel]

On 2/19/2019 2:06 PM, Will Martin wrote:
> I don’t suggest that there is anything objectively wrong with it. I 
> subjectively despise the shift in what had otherwise been a clear 
> relationship between a verb’s subject and its object.
>
> What follows is not an attempt to shift the way Klingon speakers use 
> {-moH}. I’m simply trying to describe why the veins stick out in my 
> neck when I encounter this change in the understanding of how {-moH} 
> works.
>
> It relates to the way that Okrand demures from using the term “Direct 
> Object” and chooses the apparently broader term “Object”.
>
> Basically, the Subject or Agent does the action of the verb. Languages 
> pretty universally agree on that, and pretty much every verb works 
> with most nouns acting as Subject, if that noun is actually capable of 
> doing the action of the verb, or acquiring the state suggested by the 
> verb. That much has no controversy that I’ve seen.

No. You're still mixing up syntax and semantics. The subject is the 
thing that goes at the end. It is a syntactic element that performs 
whatever the verb is, regardless of what is actually being described by 
the sentence. Whether the subject is doing something or experiencing 
something or causing something is completely irrelevant, as is /what/ is 
happening; all that is relevant is that the subject performs the verb in 
that abstract space we call syntax.

Likewise for the object. It makes absolutely no difference what the 
sentence is actually about; all that matters is that the object is 
having the verb done to it. It doesn't matter what the verb means; the 
object simply has that abstract verb done to it.

An agent, though, is an entity that actually deliberately performs an 
action. You have to know what the verb means in order to identify 
whether there is an agent and where that agent belongs in the sentence.

*chab vISop*/I eat pie./ I deliberately eat pie; I am the agent and the 
subject.
*loDHom vISopmoH*/I cause the boy to eat (something unspecified)./ I am 
not the agent even though I am the subject. My role is /causer./
*chab vISopmoH*/I cause (someone unspecified) to eat pie./ I am not the 
agent even though I am the subject. My role is causer.
*loDHomvaD chab vISopmoH*/I cause the boy to eat pie.**/I am not the 
agent even though I am the subject. My role is causer.

To identify me as the agent, you need to determine whether I am eating. 
The rest of the sentence doesn't matter and can do whatever it wants.

A patient is an entity that undergoes an action and thereby changes its 
state.

*chab vISop*/I eat pie.**/The pie is the patient because it undergoes an 
action (being eaten) and changes its state (it is gone).
*loDHom vISopmoH*/I cause the boy to eat (something unspecified)./ The 
boy is not the patient because the boy is not having his state changed; 
he is the agent because he is performing the action (eating). The pie is 
still the patient because it is being eaten. I am the causer.
*chab vISopmoH*/I cause (someone unspecified) to eat pie./ The pie is 
the patient because it is being eaten. It does not matter whether we 
know who is eating it or not. I am the causer.
*loDHomvaD chab vISopmoH*/I cause the boy to eat pie./ As always, the 
pie is the patient because it is being eaten. Again, the boy is the 
agent because he is doing the eating. I am still the causer.

Notice how it's completely irrelevant to what's actually happening 
whether a word appears as subject, direct object, or indirect object? 
What's important is what it means, not how the sentence is constructed.

To summarize: Subject does not equal agent. Object does not equal 
patient. Subject and object refer to abstract syntax without regard to 
what the sentence actually means. Agent, patient, and other semantic 
terms refer to the meaning of the sentence without regard to where they 
actually appear in the sentence.


> Meanwhile, there are other nouns that give information about the 
> action or state of the verb. A type 5 noun suffix defines specific 
> relationships between the verb and that noun. Locative, beneficiary, etc.
>
> The absence of any Type 5 suffix on a noun before the verb suggests 
> that this noun is the “Object” of the verb. So, what does this mean, 
> exactly? It seems straightforward enough, but if you look at it 
> closer, it gets more complicated.
>
> In English, you can take an example like, “The Moon orbits the Earth.” 
> Simple enough. "The Earth" is the direct object of “orbit”.
>
> The same meaning can be conveyed by saying, “The Moon goes around the 
> Earth.” Here, the “Earth” is not the direct object of “goes”. The Moon 
> doesn’t go the Earth. It goes around the Earth. The word “around” is a 
> preposition.
>
> So, in “The Moon orbits the Earth”, the direct object of “orbit” has a 
> prepositional relationship with its subject.
>
> This is a glimpse at something that is happening to the thought before 
> it goes through a brain and comes out language.
>
> Basically, each verb ties the subject and object together with a 
> relationship that is the most common type of relationship implied by 
> that verb. Different verbs imply different relationships between 
> subject and object, but the most common relationship between nouns 
> linked by the verb is the relationship defined by the appropriate 
> direct object of the verb.

This is not inherent in the syntax of the sentence. /The moon orbits the 
earth./ /Moon/ is a "force" (it performs the action mindlessly); /earth/ 
is a /theme /(undergoes the action but does not thereby change its 
state). If you change the syntax to /The moon goes around the earth,/ 
you haven't changed the semantic roles of those words one whit.


> So, the direct object of “orbit” has a prepositional relationship 
> between the subject and object.

No it doesn't. A preposition doesn't have an inherent meaning; it's the 
words that make up the preposition that are meaningful. I can, for 
instance, say /The space agency will orbit the satellite around the 
Earth fifty times./ Check a dictionary; this meaning of /orbit/ is 
listed. Now the direct object of /orbit/ isn't the thing that something 
else goes around; it's the thing that's going around something else. Now 
the direct object of orbit isn't a theme, it's a patient.



> The direct object of “hit” has an event-centric, physical interaction 
> between the subject and object.

But the direct object of /hit/ might be a patient /(The captain hit the 
enemy)/ or it might be a theme /(The smell hit my nostrils; the ship hit 
the ground)./ It's not quite so simple as that.

And what about /The ball was hit?/ We name the thing that was hit, but 
it isn't the object of /hit./


> The direct object of “build” has a historical relationship between the 
> entity that brought the direct object into being, and the resultant 
> thing that was made. Building is the process. The direct object is the 
> result of that process. The object and the process do not coexist in 
> time. The action of building is always in the past of the object that 
> was built. The object is not complete until the action of building it 
> is complete.

/Exercise builds character./ Are you suggesting an athlete has no 
character until he/she finishes exercising?


> But that’s a “direct object”. What about the larger class of 
> “objects”? Why is Okrand so squeamish about adding the word “direct” 
> in front of “object”?

I don't think he was being squeamish; I think he didn't consider it 
particularly relevant. He wasn't writing an academic paper; he was 
writing a coffee-table /Star Trek/ merchandising opportunity. The fact 
that /you/ want to analyze those words decades later doesn't make him 
squeamish.


> Well, it doesn’t seem to make much difference until you add {-moH} to 
> a verb. Then the reason for not wanting to put the descriptor “direct” 
> in front of “object” really gets in your face and refuses to be ignored.

That's because by putting on *-moH* you're telling the sentence, "Hey, 
/I/ didn't actually do this thing; I just made /someone else/ do it." 
You're asking *-moH* to do this, so it should come as absolutely no 
surprise when it does do it.


> tlhIngan Hol vIghoj. I learn the language of a Klingon.
>
> puqwI’ vIghojmoH. I teach my child. I cause my child to learn. I’m not 
> the one learning. I’m the one causing learning to happen. My child is 
> the one learning.
>
> tlhIngan Hol vIghojmoH. I teach the language of a Klingon.
>
> Okay, things just got weird. I am still causing learning to happen. 
> The language of a Klingon is not learning. Okay, so unlike every other 
> verb suffix, {-moH} is not merely modifying the verb in a way that can 
> be explained by any standard, boilerplate text. It is opening up new 
> opportunities for nouns to be objects of the verb. You don’t need no 
> stinkin’ Type 5 suffix here. You can just put two completely different 
> kinds of nouns in the role of the “object” of the verb. The object can 
> be the direct object of causation, or the direct object of the action 
> being caused.

There is no "direct object of causation" or "direct object of the 
action." These are nonsense terms. There is a direct object, which is 
whatever the verb is acting upon /without regard to the meaning of the 
sentence./ *puq vIghojmoH*//I, the subject, am acting upon the child, 
the object. Syntactically — and remember, subject and object are 
syntactic terms — I don't care what the verb means. I am acting upon the 
child. *Hol vIghojmoH*//I, the subject, am acting upon the language, the 
object. Again, I don't care what the verb actually means; all that 
matters is that I am acting upon the language.

Now, the idea that a single verb can have multiple semantic roles for 
its arguments is nothing new. /I teach the child. I teach Klingon./ 
English speakers do that without blinking. In the first sentence, the 
child is the patient. In the second sentence, Klingon is the theme. 
Different semantic roles for the same verb.

What's the big deal?

Get away from the idea that "object" conveys some kind of meaning for 
the world being described by the sentence. All it does is say that the 
subject is acting upon the object by the action of the verb. That's all. 
No meaning associated with it.


> The object of {ghojmoH} can either be the one who learns, or the topic 
> or skill being learned. If only one of these is stated, these two 
> potential objects are on equal footing and neither needs a Type 5 
> suffix to explain its relationship to the subject. Basically the 
> relationship between the subject and object is grammatically ambiguous 
> in a way that does not exist elsewhere in the language. This happens 
> to every verb, whenever {-moH} is attached to it, and it doesn’t 
> happen to any verbs without {-moH}, that we know of, anyway.

Because no verbs without *-moH* ask us to put both the patient and the 
theme (or any other combinations of roles) in the object. You did that 
yourself when you added the *-moH.* You said please, Mr. Verb, let me 
make myself, the subject, one step removed from the action by not doing 
it, but by causing someone else to do it.


> [{jatlh} comes close, since its object apparently can be either the 
> utterance or the person addressed. Again, a beautiful division between 
> two similar verbs {jatlh} and {ja’} divided by the type of appropriate 
> object, later watered down so that either verb can have either object 
> type.]

It's entirely unclear to me that verbs of speech can actually take the 
person addressed as a direct object. Okrand allows the prefix trick on 
verbs like this (*qajatlh*/I speak to you/), and we see *qaja'* a lot 
which may or may not be the prefix trick, but I believe there are 
exactly zero examples of an actual, explicit addressee as the direct 
object of such a verb. Without stronger evidence I would not make this 
claim.


> Furthermore, if both of these nouns appear, so that I say, “I teach 
> Klingon to my child,” then one of the two nouns acquires the 
> requirement of a Type 5 suffix. Oddly enough, it’s not the topic of 
> the learning. It’s the little kid doing the learning. {puqwI’vaD 
> tlhIngan Hol vIghojmoH.}

That's not odd. When no one is /causi//ng/ the verb (with *-moH*), the 
verb usually has an object with an expected meaning. *Soj vISop,* there 
is no question that *Soj* is a correct object here, but *puq vISop* 
cannot be correct unless I'm a cannibal (in which case the *puq *is 
*Soj* anyway). So all we have to do is recognize that the verb's usual 
object role, whatever it is without *-moH*, takes precedence over 
whatever agent or experiencer may have moved to become an object. 
Basically, if it was an object before the *-moH,* it stays in place if 
another object shows up.


> Personally, I would have strongly preferred {tlhIngan Hol’e’ puqwI’ 
> vIghojmoH.} That would have been more obviously understandable to new 
> people learning the language, and it would not have required a 
> reevaluation of masses of earlier canon, especially for stative verbs 
> with {-moH}.

It's only a reevaluation if you learned during that period. I see 
students nowadays who have absolutely no problem following this.


> I understand how it works. I just don’t like it.

I don't think you do understand it. You can construct sentences the 
right way, but you don't understand the rationale.

You don't have to like it. It is what it is. What purpose does it serve 
to write this much text about it?


-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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