[Tlhingan-hol] Semantic roles with -moH... again

[David Trimboli]

On 2/9/2012 1:54 PM, Brent Kesler wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 5:52 AM, David Trimboli <david at trimboli.name
> <mailto:david at trimboli.name>> wrote:
>
>     On 2/8/2012 6:30 PM, Brent Kesler wrote:
>
>
>         The problem with thematic relations and theta roles is that they're
>         subjective. It's hard for two people to look at the same
>         sentence and
>         come up with the same thematic description. For example, in the
>         sentence
>         "Mary is sad", we can both agree that Mary is the experiencer of the
>         verb-qoq 'to be sad'. The sentence "Mary cries" is problematic.
>         Is Mary
>         the agent of crying? Does that imply will on Mary's part? If
>         Mary cannot
>         choose to cry or stop crying, would it be better to describe her
>         as the
>         experiencer? If she forces herself to cry, is she the agent? The
>         cause?
>         How are we supposed to figure all that out from just the simple
>         sentence
>         "Mary cries"?
>
>
>     As I showed, this difference is not important. It doesn't matter
>     what theta role the nouns take in the sentence—when adding -moH, the
>     subject becomes the cause and the other nouns remain exactly the same.
>
>
> I'm beginning to understand your argument better, and I think it works
> -- up to a point. The basis of my argument is that semantic roles are
> imprecise; syntactic rules are precise and therefore a better guide for
> using the language. If we're going to ignore questions about the precise
> semantic role of a noun, why should we rely on a theory of semantic
> roles to determine our grammar?

I'm not using semantic roles to determine the grammar; I'm only using 
semantic roles to show what happens when using -moH. The semantic role 
of the subject is not that which performs the action; it is that which 
causes the performance of the action.

>             HIp vItuQ jIH
>             I wear a uniform (habitually or occasionally, not continuous or
>             perfective)
>             HIp = theme
>             jIH = experiencer
>
>         Why is {jIH} the experiencer? Why not agent? I assume it's an act of
>         will to wear a uniform.
>
>
>     It's an act of will to PUT ON a uniform, but the lack of type 7 verb
>     suffix indicates that the wearing is not a continuous or discrete
>     act, so it is not describing a single instance of wearing. It might
>     be used in senses like "I am proud to wear the uniform" (if Klingons
>     metaphorically link their uniforms with their service) or "I wear my
>     uniform every day" (but not meaning "I put on my uniform every day).
>     Simply finding yourself with a uniform surrounding your body makes
>     you an experiencer, not an agent.
>
>
> But once you find yourself with a uniform around your body, it is an act
> of will to keep it on, at least at the moment you make that discovery.
> If you're not paying any attention to the uniform around your body, can
> you really be said to experience the uniform?
>
> There's definitely room for argument here, but that's my point: when
> we're debating the precise semantic role, it's more like philosophy than
> linguistics. Shifting semantic roles based on the aspect of the verb
> adds needless complications to the theory. We end up ignoring the
> precise semantic roles anyways, since we can't agree on them and they're
> not really all that important, which is why I think a syntactic rule
> works better.

But syntax fails to describe the workings of -moH. -moH has an entirely 
semantic purpose. The subject doesn't simply become the object. The 
thing that is doing the sentence (syntax) isn't doing the action 
(semantics).

> This example makes sense to me. But couldn't we also say that in {QIn
> lI'moHpu' QumpIn}, {QumpIn} isn't just the cause of {lI'}, but also the
> agent of {lI'moH}?

Maybe you could, but you don't need to add {-moH} to {lI'moH}, so 
there's no need to worry about what happens when you add it. It's 
already there and the nouns are already in place.

> I think I understand your argument better now, but the usual pair of
> sentences for demonstrating {-moH} would be:
>
> 1. {quHDaj qaw wo'rIv}
> 2. {wo'rIvvaD quHDaj qawmoH Ha'quj}

Sure, this demonstrates how you would take a simple action and describe 
who caused it. That's not what I was doing. I was comparing a simple 
action to a different caused action, just to illustrate the semantic 
roles played by the nouns in each and without being confused by 
syntactic rules like "the subject becomes the object."

> Both sentences clearly say that {wo'rIv} is the one who {qaw}, whether
> there is some external cause or not. There is a clear and predictable
> pattern to where {wo'rIv} shows up in these sentences, and it's easy to
> formulate a syntactic rule for that. Semantic roles are helpful for
> understanding how {-moH} works, but they alone cannot determine whether
> we should say {wo'rIvvaD quHDaj qawmoH Ha'quj} or use some other
> construction like *{quHDaj'e' wo'rIv qawmoH Ha'quj} or even *{wo'rIv'e'
> quHDaj qawmoH Ha'quj}.

Regarding what non-subject, non-object construction to use, that's true. 
But regarding what the object of the verb must be, it does determine 
this. If you want to talk about remembering heritage in a simple action, 
and talking about remembering heritage in a caused action, both of them 
must talk about {Ha'quj qaw*}. The object is that on or to which the 
sentence is done. In all the cases we care about, *remembering* is done 
to *heritage*. In no case is *remembering* done to *Worf*. No one is 
remembering Worf. Whether the verb has -moH or not, the object must 
still perform its function. The verb is about remembering, not about 
causing. Causing is part of the meaning, but not of the syntax.

> I think I see where some of our disagreement is coming from. In my mind,
> you seem to have some sort of a priori philosophical language program
> going on: just figure out the semantic roles of each argument and plug
> them into their proper places. Looking back, I realize that's something
> I assumed you thought, not something you explicitly said. I'm attacking
> an idea that may or may not be a part of your argument based on my
> guesswork about what's going on in your head. I'm sorry.

No problem. I'm not using semantics to devise a rule for -moH; I'm using 
semantics to illustrate the use of -moH.

> Your semantic rule kinda works: "The subject changes from whatever
> semantic role it has to CAUSE, and all other arguments the verb takes
> keep their original role". That does describe what's going on with
> {wo'rIv}. However, the examples you gave seemed to insist that the
> subject of a bare verb is ALWAYS the same as the subject of a {-moH}
> verb, just with a different semantic role.
>
> 3. HIp vItuQ jIH.
> 4. HIp vItuQmoH jIH.
> 5. jIQeHtaH
> 6. jIQeHmoHtaH.
> 7. yaS vIQeHmoH.
> 8. quHDaj qaw 'oH.
> 9. ghaHvaD quHDaj qawmoH 'oH.
>
> It was 8 and 9 that really confused me. I thought you were saying that
> {'oH} had to represent the same thing in both sentences (ie, the sash),
> which didn't make sense to me.

It does represent a sash in both. I'm just not saying that the two 
sentences are referring to the same scene. John may remember his mother, 
and John may cause his mother to remember, but he and his mother are 
remembering different things at different times.

>     {QeH} without {-moH} does not take an object because its meaning
>     does not include an object, but the meaning of {QeHmoH} does. No
>     rule forbids us from putting objects on verbs of quality, except the
>     rule of "that makes no sense."
>
>
> This is what you said when we first debated {-moH}, and this is why I
> assume you're taking an a prior philosophical approach. I think you're
> assuming {QeH} encodes a natural concept that is consistent across
> languages and that anyone can intuit that that meaning does not allow an
> object. I argue that different languages can assign different semantic
> roles to whatever verb means "to be angry" and that you have to *learn*
> what those roles are. "That makes no sense" isn't a rule of the
> language; it's a strategy we use to learn a language, and it's a
> strategy that is unreliable.
>
> I could imagine studying Klingon, learning that {QeH} means "to be
> angry", that it does not take an object, then going to Kronos and
> hearing people say ?{jupwI' vIQeH} ("I'm angry at my friend") or
> ?{bomvam vIQeH} ("I'm angry about this song"). Or maybe only one of
> these is correct. Or maybe {QeH} is ergative: {jIQeH} ("I am angry") vs.
> *{jIH muQeH} ("He angers me").
>
> We're pretty sure Klingon doesn't work that way, but it just as easily
> could have. So I don't think we can say that {QeH} doesn't make sense
> with an object because it just doesn't, ie, that we can intuit for
> ourselves which verbs should have objects and which verbs should not. I
> think your understanding of {-moH} relies more on your intuitions about
> English than your observations of Klingon.

Well, no, it's not because "it just doesn't"; it's because Klingon 
doesn't seem to work that way. If Okrand comes up with a way in which 
something like *{bomvam vIQeH} makes sense, I'll be all ears.

We do use English to guide us in knowing whether a verb takes objects, 
because we have no choice. We have only Okrand's texts to go on, and no 
native speakers. We get it wrong sometimes because of this. {qIm} "pay 
attention, concentrate" was long thought not to take objects because its 
English glosses can't, but lots of people did anyway, because they 
REALLY wanted to say {vIqIm} "I pay attention to it." Okrand finally 
used it somewhere (was it the MSN page?), showing us that it CAN take an 
object representing the thing paid attention to. But in the absence of 
other information, we can only guess. And it seems pretty likely that 
all of the "be X" verbs ("verbs of quality," a term used by Okrand 
himself in KGT) are intransitive.

So in summary, it's not a complicated syntactic operation that's 
happening with -moH. It works just like it says in the extremely sparse 
information we get in KGT: it means the subject caused the action, 
rather than (necessarily) performing the action itself. There are no 
grammatical gymnastics involved, no leap-frogging subjects or objects.

-- 
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/