[Tlhingan-hol] Because you mentioned it (Was: Expressing instrumentality)

[lojmIttI'wI'nuv]

I respect and appreciate your direct response to my problem with {-moH}.

That’s not conditional. It stands as a paragraph unto itself. There is no “but”.

I still have a problem with the combination of examples 4 and 5. It seems to require {ghojmoH} to mean some kind of vague “cause learning” so that I can “cause learning” the Klingon language, and I can “cause learning” my sister. It’s especially awkward when my sister gets bumped to indirect object if both student and topic learned are mentioned in the same sentence.

I honestly believe that in English, the type of noun that qualifies as direct object is part of the verb’s definition, as in the difference between “go” and “orbit”, since the Moon orbits the Earth, but it doesn’t go the Earth. It goes AROUND the Earth. The Earth can be the direct object of “orbit”, but it can’t be the direct object of “go”. Understanding this is part of understanding the meaning of the words “orbit” and “go”.

Except for this one area of grammar, all evidence is that Klingon verbs do the same thing. If you don’t add {-moH} one of the ways to understand a Klingon verb is to understand what class of noun can be used as its direct object.

Consider {vIH}. It doesn’t take a direct object in Klingon. {vIHmoH} does, but {vIH} does not. In English, “move” can take a direct object, as in “I move my hand” or it can not take a direct object, as in “My hand moves.”. But {vIH} doesn’t exactly mean what “move” means in English. The only real difference relates to what can or cannot be the direct object. If you don’t understand this difference in potential direct objects, you can’t understand the difference in meaning between the Klingon {vIH} and the English “move”.

Any stative verb works this way in Klingon. Stative verbs allow no direct object, unless you add {-moH}, then it takes a direct object. The subject becomes the one that causes the state, and the thing exhibiting the state is the direct object. As it happens, the thing exhibiting the state would have been the subject, if the verb didn’t have {-moH} added to it.

Then we run into {ghoj}. It’s not stative. It already takes a direct object. So, when we add {-moH} it apparently can take two different KINDS of direct object. You can {ghojmoH} a student, or you can {ghojmoH} a topic that the student is learning. Either one works, unless you have both, in which case the student has to be the indirect object, and the topic has to be the direct object.

If we treated {ghoj} like we are told to treat stative verbs, then teaching a student makes sense because the subject is the one causing the learning, and the student is the one learning. But this doesn’t work if we teach a topic, because the topic isn’t learning. The topic is the thing being learned, and being learned is not the same thing as learning. So, if either the student who is learning or the topic being learned have equal status as valid direct objects of {ghojmoH}, then something strange and unique for all the grammar in Klingon is happening here. The definition of {ghojmoH} becomes vague in a new kind of way that no bare verb in Klingon ever has achieved. The definition of the word is changed.

And one of the two allowed classes of direct object has to become an indirect object if both are mentioned, but it can never be used as an indirect object if it stands alone.

That’s what we’ve apparently figured out, without guidance. It’s messy, and the dictionary is just jam packed with verbs that already take direct objects that are now apparently supposed to have their definitions expanded and altered accordingly when we add {-moH} so they can take the direct object we already expect them to take, plus an indirect object posing as direct object, if the direct object isn’t mentioned, but it gets bumped back to being indirect object if the direct object IS mentioned.

I’m sorry, but that’s not even hinted at in TKD, and Okrand has never explained this to be the case.

I’m not flaming. I’m not yelling. I’m not being nasty. I’m just pointing out that one poorly explained suffix requires a remarkable reinterpretation of most of the definitions in TKD if it is to be used as indicated by canon, and it really does feel like it’s not unfair to request a better explanation from the source of this remarkable inconsistency.

No other suffix affects what class of noun can act as a direct object, except for {-moH}, and one of those two expansions is explained in TKD, with stative verbs, but the other one isn’t.

I’ve long loved how internally consistent the language is. It is musical. This affection is the root of my response to the noise that is {-moH}.

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



> On Apr 21, 2016, at 8:38 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
> On 4/21/2016 5:06 PM, lojmIttI'wI'nuv wrote:
>> 1. My room is clean. {Say’ pa’wIj.}
> 
> pa'wIj is "doing" something (in Klingon, "being" something is "doing" something), so pa'wIj is the subject.
> 
>> 2. I clean my room. {pa’wIj vISay’moH}. I cause my room to be clean.
> 
> jIH is doing something: it is causing cleaning to happen. It is the subject. pa'wIj is having something done to it: you are making it clean. It is the direct object.
> 
>> 3. My sister learns Klingon language. {tlhIngan Hol ghoj be’nI’wI’.}
> 
> be'nI'wI' is doing something: she is learning Klingon. She is the subject. tlhIngan Hol is having something done to it: it is being learned. It is the direct object.
> 
>> 4. I teach my sister. {be’nI’wI’ vIghojmoH.} I cause my sister to learn.
> 
> jIH is doing something: it is causing learning to happen. It is the subject. be'nI'wI' is having something done to her: she is having something taught to her. She is the direct object.
> 
>> 5. I teach the Klingon language. {tlhIngan Hol vIghojmoH.} Houston, we have a problem. I don’t cause the Klingon language to learn, so the suffix {-moH} is doing something fundamentally different here than it was in examples 2 or 4. Nothing in TKD explains this. Nothing from Okrand since then has explained this.
> 
> jIH is doing something: it is causing learning to happen. It is the subject. tlhIngan Hol is having something done to it: it is being learned. It is the direct object.
> 
>> 6. I teach my sister Klingon language. {be’nI’wI’vaD tlhIngan Hol vIghojmoH.} So, if this is correct, one is drawn toward changing example 2 to {pa’wIjvaD jISay’moH}, and the fourth example should be {be’nI’wI’vaD jIghojmoH}. If that were the case, then everything would make sense, but we’ve never seen anything close to that in canon.
> 
> jIH is doing something: it is causing learning to happen. It is the subject. tlhIngan Hol is having something done to it: it is being learned. It is the direct object. be'nI'wI' is receiving the benefit of the action: she takes the teaching of Klingon that happens. She is the indirect object.
> 
> It all works.
> 
> Why aren't those objects the other way round? Because if be'nI'wI' were the one the action was performed on, it would be incorrect to say that tlhIngan Hol receives the result of that action. That would be syntactically sound but semantically nonsensical. It would be like saying I taught your sister to the Klingon language. Or Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. It's syntactically legal, but it makes no sense.
> 
>> So, we’re forced to assume that either there are grammatical rules we are clueless about that Okrand has never explained,
> 
> Not really. You're just adding a grammatical rule that Okrand never stated: that a given verb must have an exact meaning for its subjects and objects. This is not the case: ghoj doesn't have a set meaning for what its object must be, and neither does ghojmoH. It's got meanings that'll make sense and meanings that don't, but the only thing that really matters, and the only thing that TKD tells us, is that the noun phrase before the verb is the object—and, with the addition of section 6.8, it's the direct object.
> 
> Okrand never defines what an object is, except when he's explaining indirect objects, where he says, "While the object of the verb is the recipient of the action, the indirect object may be considered the beneficiary." That's as much explanation as we ever get. In other words, he expects us to already know what the words object, direct object, and indirect object mean.
> 
> A direct object has the action done to it. An indirect object receives the result of the action.
> 
> So when he constructs things like ghaHvaD quHDaj qawmoH, he's not thinking in terms of semantic roles of the nouns (agent, causer, patient, experiencer, etc.); he's using syntax only. wo'rIvvaD quHDaj qawmoH Ha'qujDaj Worf's sash reminds him of his heritage. Ha'qujDaj, the doer, performs an action—or in this case, causes an action to be performed—on something. quHDaj, the done-to, has an action performed on it (being remembered). worIv, the receiver, is the one affected by the subject acting on the direct object.
> 
>> If Okrand expects us to use {-moH} effectively, he should come forward and explain it, in detail, because he has radically changed the way it works from the way he described it in TKD. There is no other segment of grammar that he has handled worse. He’s had time. It just doesn’t bother him to leave this dangling. But it bothers me.
> 
> Or maybe it makes perfect sense, once you realize what he's doing, in which case there's nothing for him to explain. He said it all in TKD. Nothing has changed.
> 
> -- 
> SuStel
> http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>
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