On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 12:57 PM Will Martin <willmartin2@mac.com> wrote:
You say, “I’m not sure it’s quite right to say that a {-meH} verb modifying a noun can have no subject.” 

That might be why I quite carefully never said that. You are arguing with a straw man.

I meant "can have no subject" as in "it is possible to have no subject", not "it is not possible to have a subject". That is, I don't think it's quite right to say that it's possible for a {-meH} verb modifying a noun to have no subject at all.

On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 1:06 PM SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
If your third person happens to be unmarked, that's not terribly surprising. I don't think something like ghojmeH taj has the verb in the third person. I don't think it has any person at all. It just so happens that the unmarked verb with no person is identical to the verb in the third person.

Unless I've missed something, the only situation where we know that a verb is considered to have no subject and to not be in any person is when it's used with {-ghach}. Given the framework of the language as we currently know it, it makes more sense to me to interpret {ghojmeH taj} as having an impersonal third-person verb, rather than a subjectless quasi-infinitive.
We know that Klingon has impersonal third-person verbs that are still conceived of as having unspecified subjects: {SIS}, {taH pagh taHbe'.}
We know that some noun-modifying {-meH} verbs have explicit subjects: {jIpaSqu'mo' narghpu' qaSuchmeH 'eb.}
We know that in other instances where English or other languages usually use infinitives that Klingon still requires a subject, explicit or otherwise, like in sentences with {'e'} or {neH}. E.g. "I want to drink" is translated with an explicit subject for "drink": {jItlhutlh vIneH.}
It's possible that some {-meH} verbs modifying nouns are another exception to the "verbs have subjects and persons" pattern like {-ghach}, but Maltz hasn't said so one way or the other. Until he does, I don't see a reason to make an exception to this pattern just for some uses of {-meH}, when the existing pattern can handle those uses just fine as impersonal third-person verbs.