On Fri, Feb 17, 2017 at 5:36 PM, David Holt <kenjutsuka@live.com> wrote:
I have a project I'm working on and I would like to figure out the most efficient way to elicit the image of rendered fat as a thing. Is {tlhag} the subject of {'Im} and thus {'Impu'wI'} might work? Or is {tlhag} the object of {'Im} and thus we might have to go with the unwieldy {tlhagh 'Imlu'pu'bogh}? What about {-wI'} with {-lu'} - {'Imlu'pu'wI'}?
Jeremy
Oh, boy, the {-lu'} plus {-wI'} thing again! I so wish MO would finally rule on this, since it's immediately obvious to some this combination nominalizes the same way as "-ee" in "employee," but others regard the construction as grammatical gibberish, and they seem to have convinced most to avoid using it. (I can't help but suspect the difficulty with {-lu'} plus {-wI'} has a lot to do with a programming background, since the objection is often phrased as "I can't make that mean anything," which sounds a lot like a compiler error to me.)
I understand your interpretation perfectly well, thank you very much. I just think it's wrong.
-wI' has the effect of nominalizing the verb into the subject of that verb. A vutwI' is the thing that performs vut, the subject of vut.
If you were to say *vutlu'wI', you'd be trying to nominalize the verb into a nonexistent subject. No one in particular performs vutlu', so it makes no sense to talk about the noun that performs vutlu'.
If *vutlu'wI' were to mean that which is cooked, you'd be nominalizing the verb into its object, which is not what -wI' does. There's a very strong reason to think that's what it means if you're thinking in English: English passive voice turns the thing acted upon into the subject. Soj vutlu' the food is cooked, so it would seem natural to say nominalizing that refers to the food. But it doesn't. English passive voice doesn't exist in Klingon; the active voice translation of Soj vutlu' is one cooks the food, and so we're nominalizing the verb into the cook. But that's no different than nominalizing straight vut, so the -lu' has absolutely nothing to do with the meaning of -wI'. The two simply don't go together.
As for a parallel with English -ee, remember that -wI'
is equivalent to English -er, not -ee, and even in
English you need a whole different suffix to nominalize to the
object instead of the subject.
The only way this could work would be if Okrand were to
arbitrarily make up a new rule that says adding -wI' to a
verb with -lu' changes the process to refer to the object
of the verb instead of the subject. He hasn't said this, he hasn't
done this, and there is no way to deduce that rule from existing
rules. It only seems right because you're thinking in English
passive voice.
"Boil" can take an object or not, of course, but the online OED gives only transitive definitions for "render":
"Melt down (fat) in order to clarify it.Process (the carcass of an animal) in order to extract proteins, fats, and other usable parts.‘the fat was being cut up and rendered for lard’‘the rendered down remains of sheep’ "
So I'd expect {tlhag} is the object of {'Im}. 'ej bIjatlhchugh <'Imlu'pu'wI'>, vay' 'Imlu'pu'bogh 'oH 'e' SIbI' vIyaj.
Why are we dropping the h in gh?
Clearly, the correct phrase is tlhagh 'Imlu'pu'bogh
rendered fat. I'm not sure why this is supposed to be
unwieldy; Okrand has used this sort of formation a number of
times. Soj vutlu'pu'bogh food that somebody has
prepared as opposed to Soj tlhol raw, unprocessed
food; boqrat chej Qevlu'pu'bogh stewed bokrat
liver; pIpyuS pach HaHlu'pu'bogh marinated pipius
claw (all from KGT); to'baj 'uSHom lughoDlu'bogh
stuffed tobaj leg (PK).
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name