[86642] in tlhIngan-Hol

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Re: The meaning of -moH

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (ghunchu'wI')
Thu Oct 8 08:14:52 2009

In-Reply-To: <4ACD1BC6.5010709@trimboli.name>
From: "ghunchu'wI'" <qunchuy@alcaco.net>
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 08:12:36 -0400
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org

On Oct 7, 2009, at 6:52 PM, David Trimboli wrote:

> The text tells us we can put objects on verbs, but it never tells us
> when we *can't* do it.

It comes close, though.  When introducing verb prefixes, the example  
verb is {Qong} "sleep" and only the no-object prefixes are listed.   
The text then goes on to say that those prefixes are also used when  
an object is possible but not stated.  I infer from the wording that  
such prefixes are *not* used with {Qong}.  I agree that nothing  
explicitly says that there is a rule against it, but there is some  
support in TKD for saying that an object on {Qong} is not possible.   
The semantics vs. syntax distinction is a little fuzzy, but I'm  
leaning toward this being a syntactical feature.  The problem of  
being able to know which verbs have the syntactical restriction is a  
persistent one, though.

> There *is* a distinction between verbs of quality
> and verbs of action,...

With the {Qong} prefix example, there is also an apparent category of  
non-quality verbs which don't take objects.

-- ghunchu'wI'




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