On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 2:26 PM SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
The fact that you can (apparently) say *meQ* or *meQmoH* to mean the same thing doesn't mean that one necessarily arises from a dropping or adding of *-moH* for brevity or pragmatics. That's one possible reason, but there are others.
And we don't actually *know* that you can say *meQmoH* and mean *burn (something).* Maybe the existence of transitive *meQ* means Klingons don't accept the use of *meQmoH* at all, because that would be silly. I'm not saying this is the case, just that we don't know.
*jIbDaj lumeQmoH jIbDaj lumeQmoH qul bIQtIq qulHommey* *Sparks from the fire river Caught his hair, Caught his hair.* (paq'batlh, paq'yav, canto 12, lines 4-6, page 86-87) (My guess is that Okrand started paying more attention to verb transitivity in between KGT and PB, although this doesn't really help fit earlier examples into a consistent grammar.)