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

[lojmIttI'wI'nuv]

You are helping me clarify how this works, and I appreciate it.

My problem is still that sometimes the student is the direct object (when the topic is not mentioned) and sometimes it is the indirect object (when the topic is mentioned) and it’s never an indirect object if the topic is absent. That is inconsistent. That is the root of the vague new definition that bothers me.

It’s like saying, “I give the blood pie to my sister.” “I give the blood pie.” “I give my sister.”

No, I don’t give my sister. I give TO my sister.

English does have the quirk of saying, “I give my sister the blood pie,” and if anyone is trying to teach English to someone else and they get to this example, they should take the time to explain how this weird little example works, because it really is never okay to say “I give my sister” in this context, if you don’t mention the blood pie, and that’s what Klingon is doing here.

If {ghojmoH} really means “teach” and not “cause to learn”, then I teach my sister. I teach Klingon. I teach Klingon to my sister. No problem. But we’ve had it explained that {ghojmoH} only indirectly means “teach”. It actually means “cause to learn”.

So, it’s like he took the definition “teach” and then mashed the Klingon through a literal translation of the English, and if that’s the way it is to be done, then we need to come up with a different definition for every OTHER transitive verb plus {-moH} so that we can mash THEM through a hacked English translation to make sense of it.

And TKD doesn’t give us those definitions… He gave us “teach”, and he has applied it as if that’s literally what it means in all the ways it means it in English, and then he hasn’t given us most of the definitions we need to use {-moH} accordingly.

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



> On Apr 22, 2016, at 10:02 AM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
> On 4/22/2016 9:35 AM, lojmIttI'wI'nuv wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> Really? -chuq and -'egh force the subject to be the object. -wI' and -ghach prevent the use of objects altogether, so far as we can tell.
> 
> Yes, -moH is unique, which is probably why it has a suffix class all to itself. Remember its definition, and try to forget all the baggage of ditransitivity and indirect objects that have been built up by ourselves over the years: "Adding this suffix to a verb indicates that the subject is causing a change of condition or causing a new condition to come into existence."
> 
> In other words, the role of the subject changes when using -moH. The subject goes from being an agent or an experiencer to being a causer. But that's the only thing that changes. Anything else that happens is determined purely by the rules set out in TKD and whether an object is a direct or indirect object.
> 
> Who's acting? Who's being acted upon? Who's receiving that action? Those are the only determinants for what is a subject, direct object, and indirect object. All of Okrand's examples follow this.
> 
> Don't build a -moH sentence by starting with an un-moH'd sentence and adding -moH. Start from scratch. If the subject is causing the action to happen, add -moH. If something is being acted upon, make it the direct object. If someone is receiving the action, make it the indirect object.
> 
> -- 
> SuStel
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