“I cause him to give them the book” is thorny, since we don’t seem to have enough Type 5 suffixes to explain four nouns (I, him, them, book) wrapped around the word {nob} to have this meaning. It’s easy enough to say, “I cause the book to be given to them,” as {chaHvaD paq vInobmoH}, using SuStel styled translation “I cause-giving the book to them,” leaving the identity of the one forced to give the book out of it. The full meaning would be easy enough in two sentences: {chaHvaD paq nob (ghaH); vInobmoH.} I guess it could also be {chaHvaD paq nob ghaH, vInobmoHmo’.} There. One sentence. Yes, the verb is restated, but I don’t know a better way to pack that fourth noun into the sentence with one verb. Subject, indirect object (a.k.a. beneficiary), object… ummm. If we try to put two direct objects on it, then it gets confusing which is giving and which is being given, which is the core of the problem with {-moH} on already-transitive verbs (even though Okrand explicitly evades the use of the word “transitive”, since apparently Klingon grammarians don’t deal with the concept as a thing). I’ll be happy to embrace any more elegant approach to the problem. I mean, in a wild fantasy, this might work, but it would have to be a Klingon convention not explained in TKD or any canon source: {chaHvaD paq’e’ ghaH vInobmoH} I mean, heck, {-‘e’} has been used to fix several problems in Klingon expression of meaning, like marking Head Nouns of Relative Clauses, right? Maltz would have to reveal to us whether the {-‘e’} would be applied to the book or the person forced to give the book. Either one makes sense, but we’d have to have one standard way to do it, or it would be pointless. I certainly am not qualified to declare which one was right. The actual object of the verb (as opposed to the object of causation) makes sense to me as the better recipient of being marked by {-‘e’}, but who am I but a pale shadow of a former Beginners’ Grammarian? This won’t work unless Okrand says so… or Maltz. Right. Maltz. Maltz has to say so. So, there. pItlh charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)

On May 17, 2023, at 2:54 AM, De'vID via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org> wrote:

On Sun, May 14, 2023 at 8:39 PM Michael Kúnin via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org <mailto:tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org>> wrote:

...

What about resolving the issue of causative (i.e, {-moH}) verbs when the original verb is transitive?

What specifically is the issue? Is it just how to express the direct and indirect objects?

...

An example with one complement: {ghoj}; what is the canon Klingon for "I teach him mathematics"?

We already know that this is {ghaHvaD mI'QeD vIghojmoH}.

...

An example with two complements: {nob}; what is the the canon Klingon for "I make him give the book to them"?

I'll ask for clarification about this.

-- De'vID _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

I have two suggestions related to type-5 noun suffixes. 1)

An example with two complements: {nob}; what is the the canon Klingon for "I make him give the book to them"?

This sentence has both a recipient and a causee. I'm unsure if there is a simple Klingon -moH sentence that does this, but there is an important question: which of them we can mark with -vaD? If we have the following sentence: chaHvaD paq vInobmoH. Does it mean "I make (someone unspecified) give the book to them" (-vaDindicates the recipient) or "I make them give the book (to someone unspecified)" (-vaD indicates the causee)? I have heard many times that people have said it should be the latter, ie. the indirect object is the party who is made to do something, the causee. I'm not entirely convinced of this. In the XvaD Y ghojmoH example we have, these two possible interpretations of -vaD overlap: the indirect object X is both the recipient of the teaching and the causee of the learning. Therefore, we cannot know which fo those -vaD marks in a general case. I'd like this to be clarified in the third edition. 2) The meaning of -'e' when used at the start of a sentence. We have one example in which it seemingly marks the topic. Does this generalize? Can we always mark a topic using -'e' and in which situations this is a common thing to do, since it appears to be very rare in canonical Klingon. Iikka "fergusq" Hauhio ------- Original Message ------- On Wednesday, May 17th, 2023 at 20.47, Alan Anderson via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org> wrote:

On Sun, May 14, 2023 at 2:38 PM Michael Kúnin via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org> wrote:

...

An example with two complements: {nob}; what is the the canon Klingon for "I make him give the book to them"?

That's not a sentence I've seen in canon. I think {chaHvaD paq nob ghaH 'e' vIqaSmoH} is reasonably obvious, but I've been doing this for more than a quarter of a century and I've collected a fair number of patterns to use when translating such phrases. The second verb could also be something like {vIraD} or {vIra'} or {vIpoQ}, depending on what shade of meaning you want "make" to have.

-- ghunchu'wI'