[293] in tlhIngan-Hol
Causatives
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Fri May 1 15:21:48 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: Ken_Beesley.PARC@xerox.com
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Fri, 1 May 1992 11:08:00 PDT
In-Reply-To: "tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma:us:Xerox's message of 30 A
A few friendly comments inspired by the sig discussion. Feedback is welcome.
Mark Shoulson suggests that "civilize yourself!" would be
yItay'eghmoH (you-(be-civilized)-self-causative).
I would like to suggest a couple of reasons why I suspect it should be
yItaymoH'egh (you-(be-civilized)-causative-self).
1. General principles of derivation. Although Mark has lined up the suffixes
in the prescribed order (-'egh is a type 1 verbal suffix and -moH is type 4),
agglutinating languages like Klingon (e.g. Aymara) usually have much more going
on than the rough suffix classes alone can capture. In particular, it is very
common for the addition of a suffix to change the part of speech of the overall
word, allowing (or forcing) it thereafter to take suffixes of a completely
different type. ghun, for example, is a verb meaning "to program computers."
Add the verbal suffix -wI', however, and the resulting form ghunwI'
(programmer) is a noun that can presumably take nominal suffixes like the
plural: ghunwI'pu' (programmers). In other words, the form ghunwI', despite
its verbal origins, now acts much like any simple noun.
Similarly, I suggest that the -moH suffix, the causativizer, makes
transitive verbs out of intransitive verbs, and then those derived transitive
verbs can fill the same morphological slots as simple transitive verbs. Take a
simple transitive verb like chop (bite). "I bit him" would be vIchoppu' on
the pattern SubjObjPrefix--TransitiveVerb--Perfective. "I bit myself" would be
jIchop'eghpu' on the pattern SubjPrefix--TransitiveVerb--self--perfective.
Now, to say "I civilized him," you start with tay (be-civilized) and add -moH
(causative) to form taymoH (cause to be civilized = civilize), a derived
transitive verb; then "I civilized him" is vItaymoHpu' on the same pattern as
vIchoppu'. "I civilized myself", by analogy, would be jItaymoH'eghpu' (i.e.
the derived transitive verb taymoH can fit in the same slot as the simple
transitive verb chop). And the imperative "civilize yourself!" would be
yItaymoH'egh on the same pattern as yIchop'egh (bite yourself!). `
Another way to look at the same examples is to notice that 'egh makes
sense after transitive verbs but not after intransitive ones. Subject-Object
prefixes make sense before transitive verbs but not before purely intransitive
ones.
mIS be-confused (intransitive)
chop bite (transitive)
jIchop'eghpu' I bit myself
*jImIS'eghpu' *I was confused myself.
*qamISpu' *I be-confused you.
qachoppu' I bit you.
One way of explaining these examples (and formalizing the restriction in any
computerized morphological analyzer) is to say that Subject-Object verbal
prefixes must come before a transitive verb like chop (bite). They cannot
appear before a purely intransitive verb. Of course, they can also appear
before transitive verbs that are derived, via the causative suffix, from an
intransitive verb.
qachoppu' I bit you.
qamISmoHpu' I confused (mISmoH = caused to be confused) you.
Similarly, the reflexive 'egh can come only after a transitive verb, either
simple or derived with -moH.
jIchop'eghpu' I bit myself.
jImISmoH'eghpu' I confused (mISmoH = caused to be confused) myself.
2. Lexicalization. Even if the above is not valid in a productive way (though
I suspect it is), it may still be true for a significant number of
"lexicalized" causative verbs. Note that the following (among others) are
actually listed in the lexicon:
ghuH prepare for/be alerted to (v)
ghuHmoH alert/warn (v)
Hegh die (v)
HeghmoH be fatal (v)
mIS be-confused (v)
mISmoH confuse (v)
tay be-civilized (v)
taymoH civilize (v)
The -moH examples are transitive, obviously derivable from their intransitive
roots, but their inclusion in the lexicon would imply that they can act like
any other transitive verb such as HoH (kill). These derived forms have become
"lexicalized." Similarly, some compound words like jolpa' (transport-room)
have similarly become lexicalized and are also included in the lexicon.
Lexicalized noun-noun compounds in many languages often take on special
meanings, somewhat divorced from the original components. Thus jolpa',
literally "transport-beam | room" is now just translated as "transport room."
(And it would probably remain the jolpa' even if the transport technology moved
from transport beams to something else.) Similarly, the English "blackboard"
has been lexicalized as a noun used to refer to various writing surfaces, which
might now be green, gray or even white. And in the rooms we refer to with the
lexicalized "bathroom," there is often no bath at all.
Comments are welcome. What we need are a few native informants.
Ken Beesley
beesley.parc@xerox.com
