[Tlhingan-hol] Klingon Word of the Day: chIm

[mayql qunenoS]

Thank you for replying. With the help of your comments, 11 hours of
sleep (!), and a coffee so strong it could wake up the dead, I managed
to understand what my problem was ; I managed to identify the faulty
circuit in my tlhIngan engine.

Lets take a stroll down the obscure path of yesterday's mistake.. Walk with me..

I want to say <the sun was made to become black>, so I employ qIj. And
then I start thinking :

qIj jul = the sun is black
then I place {-choH} in order to express the <becomes>
qIjchoH jul = the sun becomes black

but now I want to express the <was made>, so I take the {-moH}, place
it on the {qIjchoH jul} produce {qIjchoHmoH jul} and think I got the
job done. Why ?

Because it is not so much the <be verb> that I do not understand ; It
is the -moH ! I realized (finally !) that the -moH means <someone
causes something to happen> ; when I placed it on the qIj, it gave the
meaning that someone <caused> something to be black. However I thought
that the -moH could also mean <something was caused to happen>, giving
to the whole construction a feel of passive voice, leading me to give
as the proper translation <the sun was made to become black>.

The faulty circuit was the misconception that all by itself the {-moH}
could mean {something was caused to happen} and not the correct
{someone causes something to happen}, therefore leading me to employ
the {-lu'} in case I wanted to have an unspecified subject.

So, I just ripped out the faulty component from my engine, threw it
out of an airlock and used it for target practice..

cpt qunnoq
peace is a lie, there is only passion

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 10:57 PM,  <qov at kli.org> wrote:
>> So, lets approach this by doing this.. I'll write some thoughts on qIj ;
> please
>> read them and tell me your comments.
>>
>> bIQ qIj = black water
>> qIj bIQ = the water is black
>> qIjchoH bIQ = the water becomes black
>> qIjchoHmoH bIQ = the water causes (something) to be black (although i just
>> saw that since qIj describes a state or quality it cannot take an
>> object)
>>
>> bIQ qIjchoHmoHlu' = someone causes the water to become black ; but wait a
>> second ! I just realized that if qIj cannot take an object, then how come
> in
>> this example bIQ IS the object ?
>
> qIj by itself can't take an object, but once you add -moH it's a new verb
> that means "make black" and makes more sense with an object.
>
>> ..and now that I saw again my original sentence {qIjchoHmoH jul}, I
> realized
>> that when one uses -moH, he must state who is "doing the causing" ; Indeed
>> I wrote that the sun is doing the causing. But if I had a subject doing
> the
>> causing, then the sun would be placed at the object position and verbs
> which
>> describe state or qualities cannot take one.
>>
>> Perhaps one could say that "one can't use -moH on intransitive verbs",
> which
>> I'm sure that it is wrong..
>>
>> There is something I just can't figure out here.
>
> You just overthought it.  Sure, qIj can't take an object. It just makes no
> sense.  Turn it into qIjmoH and it makes sense, so it can have an object.
> You'll find an example right in TKD: nuqDaq wajwIj vIlamHa'choHmoH? It's a
> god idea to work through the phrasebook section of TKD to see how the
> language works put together. That same sentence shows that it's not
> necessary to say {waqmeywIj}. There's no need to be explicitly plural.
> People will assume there are multiple shoes involved, and the answer won't
> change if they don't.
>
> -Qov
>