[Tlhingan-hol] Interactions between verb suffixes

[Bellerophon, modeler]

This whole discussion turned out to be both less and more than I was
looking for in my original post. Less, because aside from a few canon
sentences that were suggested, it adds no Maltz-approved examples or
explanations, but more, because it's been such a productive
discussion. I tried to digest this discussion while it was in
progress, and pored over TKD 4.2. Unfortunately for students, this
thread consists of twenty-odd messages, so perhaps someone can
condense it for students of the language. That complications arise
from use of multiple verb suffixes is obvious to even the beginning
student: when I first started looking at TKD in 1985, this is one
aspect of the language that made me doubt it was workable.

Alan makes an important point that you can always sacrifice brevity
for clarity. Even though some endings do not have verb equivalents
(for instance, {-qang} <willing> has no closer verb equivalent than
{neH}), I see no reason one cannot apply these suffixes to pronouns,
such as {jIHqang} <I am willing>, so if {vImejqangmoH} is unacceptably
ambiguous, one could say {vImejmoHmeH jIHqang} for <I am willing to
make him leave> as opposed to <I make him willing to leave>.

As for the general possibilities arising from multiple verb suffixes,
there seem to be four: totally unambiguous, ambiguous except for
context, ambiguous even in context, and nonsense. I think it is
possible to categorize the interactions by the ordinal numbers of the
suffixes, but that one has to take into account the meaning of the
verb and how many arguments it has; that except for rovers {-qu'} and
{-be'}, the ordering of suffixes, being grammatically ordained, has no
effect on their scope; that although the wording in TKD consistently
uses the term "subject," a suffix may apply to the agent of a verb
followed by {-moH}, even though it happens to be the grammatical
object; and finally that one should use context and common sense to
see if there is a preferred interpretation.

yIn Sengmo' qaStaHvIS jar vebHa' tetlhvam vIbuSQo'. DaH tlhIngan Hol
vIHaDrupqa'.

qastaHvIS DIS chu' jaj wa'DIch KLI, KAG je vImuvta' 'ej tlhIngan pong vIwIvta'.

~mIp'av



-- 
My modeling blog:          http://bellerophon-modeler.blogspot.com/
My other modeling blog:  http://bellerophon.blog.com/