[tlhIngan Hol] tuQ and tuQmoH difference

[SuStel]

On 2/19/2019 5:09 PM, Will Martin wrote:
>
>> On Feb 19, 2019, at 3:36 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name 
>> <mailto:sustel at trimboli.name>> wrote:
>>
>> On 2/19/2019 2:06 PM, Will Martin wrote:
>>> ...
>>> 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.
>>
> That sounds simple, and it fits the way I always thought it worked, 
> until I hit a wall when a verb with {-moH} gets two objects, except 
> that one of them needs {-vaD}, if both objects are stated, but doesn’t 
> need it if only one object is stated.

It's more than just an arbitrary attaching of *-vaD* because you can't 
have two objects. In *loDHomvaD chab vISopmoH* I am causing an action to 
happen and the /recipient/ of the thing that I cause is the boy. He is 
receiving that which I cause. A recipient is a beneficiary or an 
indirect object. That's what *-vaD* does, and that's why the *loDHom* 
gets it.


> I think my problem is that in “I give Sam an apple,” there’s a direct 
> object and an indirect object, and there are grammatical clues as to 
> which is which based on word order. So, Klingon doesn’t like to use 
> the terms “direct” or “indirect”, and so both kinds of objects are 
> “objects”.

Klingon /does/ have direct and indirect objects. There's a whole section 
of the TKD addendum about indirect objects. I'm saying that there are 
times when Klingon sentences don't care all that much which one is 
which, and there are times when they do.


> I could get that. Klingon doesn’t care about the difference between a 
> direct object “I give an apple” and an indirect object, “I give to 
> Sam”, which I can combine in English as “I give Sam an apple.” The 
> verb “give” has two objects. One is direct. One is indirect. Klingon 
> doesn’t care about the difference. I could get that.

In this case, Klingon /does/ care. You have to say *SamvaD 'epIl naH 
vInob.* There's no other way to formulate it. *Sam* is the recipient of 
the giving (not of causing), so it gets *-vaD.*


> But in Klingon, this works in a way backwards from English, because 
> instead of being able to say, “I give an apple to Sam,” optionally as 
> “I give Sam an apple,” and could say the parts as, “I give an apple,” 
> and “I give to Sam,” it’s like the only legal form of the combination 
> sentence is “I give an apple to Sam,” and the parts would be expressed 
> as “I give an apple,” and “I give Sam.”
>
> I’m not allowed to say, “I give to Sam,” but if both objects are 
> stated, I have to say, “I give an apple to Sam.” It’s not okay to say, 
> “I give Sam an apple”.

A consequence of Klingon not having prepositions.



>> 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.
>>
> Perfectly sensible. {Sop} without {-moH} and the same noun is both the 
> agent and the causer.


No. In *chab vISop* I am the agent but not the causer. There is no 
causer in *chab vISop.* Nobody caused me to eat the pie. If you wanted 
my to cause myself to eat the pie, that'd be *chab vISop'eghmoH.*


> {SopmoH} and the subject is the causer, while the agent becomes one of 
> two possible objects of the verb. If both objects exist, then the 
> agent gets {-vaD} added, but if the agent is the only stated object, 
> it does not get {-vaD}.

Yes.


>> 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.
>>
> So, both the agent and the patient are both potential objects of 
> {SopmoH}, so long as only one of them is explicitly stated, while only 
> the patient can be the object of {Sop}, though if both the patient and 
> the agent are explicit, then the agent gets {-vaD} and the patient is 
> grammatically the one object, since {-vaD} essentials marks the agent 
> as something other than object.

It marks the agent as a beneficiary of the causing, but the marking only 
happens to avoid a double direct object.


> Technically, one could consider it an “indirect object”, but Klingon 
> doesn’t have indirect objects or direct objects.

Except it does. It just doesn't distinguish them until it has to.


> It just has “objects”. Though in any other setting, a noun with {-vaD} 
> on it is not an object because if it’s the only object there, the 
> prefix does not agree with it being interpreted as an object.

I could say *loDHomvaD jInob* /I give (something unspecified or general) 
to the boy/ and *loDHomvaD *is the indirect object.

The whole shifting-objects thing only happens with *-moH,* as you've said.


> … all of which makes it more complicated than the original statement 
> that "the object is having the verb done to it.”
>
> It sounds like the patient is having the verb done to it.

Again, there's syntax and then there's semantics. Syntactically, the 
/object/ has the /verb /done to it. Semantically, the /patient /has the 
/action/ done to it, and the /recipient/ has the action done /for/ it. 
Notice the difference between having a verb done to you (a completely 
abstract concept) and having the action done to you (considering the 
/meaning/ of what's going on, not some abstract verb).

Syntax: the subject does verb to the object. I don't know anything about 
what just happened.

Semantics: I know everything about what just happened, but I don't know 
how you've formulated a sentence to express it.


> But you are dancing on both sides of the definition of what the verb 
> is. Is the verb eating, or is it causing eating?

That's semantics. A verb with *-moH* is still just a verb, and 
syntactically it still just has abstract subjects and objects.


> It has more to do with verbs that normally do not take objects because 
> they have no patient, like {tuj}. The agent becomes the object with 
> {tujmoH}.
>
> My real problem is, why not say {chabwIjvaD jItujmoH.}?

You probably could, but since you can say *chabwIj vItujmoH* you'd sound 
silly doing it. /I make things in general hot, and I do it for my pie./

The grammar of *loDHomvaD chab vISopmoH* has to do with the fact that 
you can already say *chab Sop.* You can't say that you *tuj *something, 
so the grammar will necessarily be different. The pie is the experiencer 
(instead of agent). it makes perfect sense to put that in the object 
position of *tujmoH, *because syntactically it's the thing the subject 
(syntax) is acting upon. It's the experiencer because it's the thing 
that's experiencing the action in the real world.

> The implication is that this is the correct version of {chabwIj 
> vItujmoH}, because if there were a patient here, {chab} would need {-vaD}.

That would be the implication if the rule were that a verb with *-moH* 
forces patients to be indirect objects, but that's not the rule. The 
rule is, apparently, that verbs with *-moH* prefer their pre*-moH* 
objects over objects that appear after *-moH* is added. *tuj* has no 
original object, so there's no reason *chab**wIj* can't slide right in 
there.


> That’s the ghost that whispers to me when I see how Okrand has 
> explained how {-moH} works. It’s an inconsistency in the grammar.

It works completely consistently, and he's done it quite a bit now. 
You're having trouble reconciling your internalized rules with how it 
works, but that's not an inconsistency in the grammar.


>
>>> 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./
>>
>>
> Passive voice. Special. I’d expect the ball to be patient of hit with 
> an indefinite agent, bu then, are we talking about the sphere, or the 
> score-related number?

Switching to passive voice is very much like adding *-moH.* You're 
moving semantic roles around in a sentence while using the same rules 
syntax.

/I hit the ball
/Syntax: I am subject; the ball is direct object.
Semantics: I am agent; the ball is patient.

/The ball was hit by me/.
Syntax: The ball is subject; /me /is the object of a preposition.
Semantics: I am agent; the ball is patient.


> 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?
>>
>>
>
> Another good example, though my read of this is more like shorthand 
> for “Exercise builds on the character you have, increasing and 
> improving it.” No matter. Your point taken.

Notice that you changed the syntax, changing /character/ from a direct 
object to the object of a preposition.


>
>>> 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.
>>
>>
> I learned about direct objects in high school. I didn’t think it was 
> particularly academic. My bad. I had a very good English teacher. I 
> didn’t know she was giving us advanced stuff.

Nonsense. /The Klingon Dictionary/ isn't as precise as a high school 
English class.


> It seems logical that if both objects were there, then the patient 
> would get {-‘e’}, since we had a lot more examples of agent as object 
> than patient as object up to this point, so it really felt like the 
> patient should be the object and this other thing should be marked 
> with a Type 5 of some sort.

It doesn't get *-vaD* as some sort of generic 
I-need-to-tag-it-with-something-and-here's-a-convenient-suffix. It gets 
*-vaD* because it's the noun that is receiving the thing that the 
subject is doing. Syntactically.


> I was just trying to use the language that TKD uses instead of 
> switching to the academic terms “agent” and “patient”, which Okrand 
> doesn’t mention and I didn’t learn in high school. My choice of 
> language didn’t work for you. It probably didn’t work for anyone.

TKD doesn't have the vocabulary to explain how this works. This sort of 
thing wasn't explained in TKD, and didn't show up until a SkyBox card.


>> 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?
>>
> The big deal is the difference between the English word “teach” and 
> the Klingon word {ghojmoH}. Yes, the gloss is the same.

What's the big deal /in English?/ There is none. You effortlessly switch 
between saying /I teach the child/ and /I teach the language./ We 
understand the semantic difference; we know that you're not causing a 
language to learn something, and that the child is not a subject of 
study. Why can't Klingons be equally quick to understand *puq vIghojmoH* 
and *Hol vIghojmoH?* A Klingon will not be moving suffixes and objects 
around in his head, trying to identify agents and indirect objects and 
so on.


-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/attachments/20190219/40a9f7ff/attachment-0015.htm>