[tlhIngan Hol] Clarification on SIch

[De'vID]

On Wed, 10 Apr 2019 at 20:38, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:

> Am 10.04.2019 um 18:47 schrieb SuStel:
> > English has a lot of words whose meanings change if they've got a
> > preposition associated with them.
>
> Then why did Okrand write "reach" and not "reach for"?


Because {SIch} does map to the concept associated with "reach". Also, while
he was writing TKD he never expected the language to take off like it has,
and he was also poking fun at the genre of travelers' dictionaries which
have word lists with ambiguous glosses.


> Or, the other way
> around: why was there any confusion about this word, if the meaning
> changes with the preposition?


Huh? The confusion is *due* to the verb's inconsistent meaning due to
context and use with prepositions in English. It's the same problem that
came up with {DIl} earlier.

{DIl} means that the subject is giving out something, to obtain something
or fulfil a financial obligation. A short way to gloss that in English is
"pay for". But English is inconsistent in that you pay for a meal, pay
rent, pay off a mortgage, etc.

Same thing for {SIch}. The intended meaning is something like "extend
oneself to make contact with the object". A short way to gloss that in
English is "reach". Meanings related to this are expressed with
prepositions in English: reach for, reach towards, reach out, etc. In
Klingon, related meanings are expressed using suffixes and using {SIch}
with other verbs (like {'e' nID}).


> Okrand usually gives the prepostion when
> needed (as in "pay for").
>

 Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't.

-- 
De'vID
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