On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 11:44 AM Felix Malmenbeck <felixm@kth.se> wrote:

We have seen some Klingon words that show a similar type of ambitransitive alternation (ghom, choH, mev), and I'm sure others exist, but from an in-universe perspective, there's not much reason to infer that a Klingon verb is an alternating ambitransitive based on whether or not its English gloss is.

It seems this behavior is seen in Klingon verbs like meQ, where -moH is sometimes dropped. Perhaps this happens due to your out-of-universe explanation, but an in-universe explanation would be the desire for brevity, combined with pragmatics.

chabHom bal qoDDaq ghopwIj vISIchmoH I make my hand reach into the cookie jar, or maybe better ghopwIjvaD chabHom bal qoD vISIchmoH would be a safe construction, assuming the body part or implement can be the subject of SIch, 

On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 12:01 PM De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:


On Wed, 10 Apr 2019 at 16:37, Ed Bailey <bellerophon.modeler@gmail.com> wrote:
Here are two more things about SIch I'd like clarified.
Can it be used with the body part or implement as its object? ?chabHom bal qoD[Daq] ghopwIj vISIch I reach my hand into the cookie jar.

Did someone cut off your hand and put it into a cookie jar, and are you retrieving it (presumably with your other hand)? I read this as "In the cookie jar, I reach my hand."

I'd cite this as an example of the deliberate disuse of pragmatics: resolving ambiguity by following a strict usage rule rather than choosing the most likely possibility as the speaker's intent. Klingons do have some strict usage rules, to be sure, and I'm not saying Klingons actually use SIch this way - it was a question - but Klingons do need pragmatics in order to communicate effectively, which in turn can inform usage. I doubt one Klingon would deliberately misunderstand  the other simply because of dropping the -moH for brevity, unless there was a reason for strictness (like the case of the missing Oxford comma in the labor contract https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html).

~mIp'av