[Tlhingan-hol] HuS

Sun Nov 22 08:40:48 PST 2015

Keep in mind that since Marc Okrand is quite aware that those who speak his language hang on his every example, there are some verbs that are somewhat vague about who is doing what simply because he knows that he doesn’t use the language very often, and he’s aware that he may use one of them differently in the future than he has used it in the past simply because he forgot how he had previously intended to use it. I’m suspecting that {ja’} may be this sort of verb, given that the examples of significant difference in choice of objects fall with striking consistency along a time line. Older examples consistently have a person as the direct object. Newer examples often include things being said as the direct object.

The conversion tools we have for any verb that has the issue this thread focuses on resolved are that we can use {vIH} and {vIHmoH}, or {Dub} and {Dub’egh} or {Dublu’}. Once we know limits on the meaning of the verb, we can use these tools to give the other meaning.

As a general rule, for myself, when I don’t know, I assume that the subject of the verb is the one doing the action of the verb, like {vIH} because that seems to be what Okrand does more often, though not always, and if I can’t tell what he’s doing, I go with what he does more often.

So, I go for {chung Duj} or {Duj chungmoH HoD}, {tlhe’ Duj}, {Duj tlhe’moH HoD}, {voQ jagh}, {jagh vIvoQmoH}, and {HuS joqwI’} and {joqwI’ vIHuSmoH}.

I’ll almost certainly be wrong some of the time, but then, that’s true no matter which way you choose to use these verbs. I’m just betting that more often, he uses these verbs so that the subject is the one closest to the nature of the action of the verb.

Besides, I’m so often wrong about other things, why be shy about being wrong about this? Better to err boldly than to be hesitant and squeamish and pay too much attention to the {ghIlob ghewmey}. There’s no question about whether or not my meaning will be understood.

lojmIt tI’wI’ nuv ‘utlh
Door Repair Guy, Retired Honorably

> On Nov 22, 2015, at 7:25 AM, Felix Malmenbeck <felixm at kth.se> wrote:
> 
>> Any others? Someone must have a list. I'm drawing a blank on such
>> verbs where (only) the object does the action that the verb describes.
> 
> I can think of one: {Dub}
> 
> {DuraS tuq tlhIngan yejquv patlh luDub 'e' reH lunIDtaH DuraS be'nI'pu' lurSa' be'etor je.}
> "The sisters of the House of Duras, Lursa and B'Etor, are constantly seeking a higher standing for the House of Duras within the Klingon High Council." (S26)
> 
> {SuvwI' vI' Dub naQvam}
> "This serves to steady the aim of a warrior"
> 
> Marc Okrand has also sort of confirmed this by saying that "now we know from usage" how this word is to be used.
> http://klingonska.org/canon/1998-12-holqed-07-4.txt
> 
> We don't know how {'argh} ("worsen") works, but it stands to reason that it would work similarly.
> 
> Some other examples that we don't know the syntax for (or at least I don't) are {voQ} ("choke"), {tlhe'} ("turn") and {chung} ("accelerate").
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com>
> Sent: Sunday, November 22, 2015 09:44
> To: tlhingan-hol at kli.org
> Subject: Re: [Tlhingan-hol] HuS
> 
> SuStel:
>>> I think we'll eventually find that, like so many other
>>> could-be-subject-could-be-object verbs, it can go either way at the need
>>> of the speaker, and context makes the meaning clear.
> 
> QeS 'utlh:
>> Oh, I tend to think so too, leaving it to the verb's argument structure to
>> disambiguate. All I meant is just that this is one of those examples where
>> we have no canon support for prioritising one interpretation over the other.
> 
> Does anyone have statistics on the could-be-subject-could-be-object
> verbs? I think there aren't that many of them (a few dozen at most?),
> though I haven't made any effort to actually go through the word list
> and count them.
> 
> A bunch of people asked Okrand about verb transitivity at qepHom 2011.
> We got that the subjects of {ghur} and {nup} are doing the increasing
> and decreasing, respectively, and that one has to add {-moH} to
> increase or decrease something else. He started to say that {DIng}
> worked like {jIr}, but (according to my notes of the event) got
> interrupted before he could finish his explanation. But we know that
> one {jIrmoH}s a bat'leth, and that's sufficient to establish that the
> subject of {DIng} spins.
> 
> We know that the subject of {vIH} moves by its definition: "move, be
> in motion". (Wouldn't it have been nice if {HuS} had been "hang, be
> hanging"?)
> 
> We know {meQ} and {So'} can be both because we have canon examples of both.
> 
> subject: {vIH}, {ghur}, {nup}, {jIr}, {DIng}
> both: {meQ}, {So'}
> object:
> unknown: {HuS}
> 
> Any others? Someone must have a list. I'm drawing a blank on such
> verbs where (only) the object does the action that the verb describes.
> 
> p.s. Another pair I thought of was {He'} and {largh}, "smell, emit
> odor" and "smell, sense odors", respectively, although I think that's
> not the kind of verb we're talking about, since "to smell something"
> doesn't mean "to cause something to smell" (the way that "to spin
> something" means to "cause something to spin"). It's fortunate though
> that we didn't get just a single entry with the definition "v. smell".
> 
> --
> De'vID
> 
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