[tlhIngan Hol] Is {Sal} a verb of movement ?

[Will Martin]

I think the real issue here is that most verbs take some kind of object, and on a case-by-case basis, in order to fully understand each verb, you have to understand what kind of object it takes. While I like the idea of the term “locative verb”, I think that it might tempt people to oversimplify the relationship between verbs and objects by classifying one type of verb that uses a location for an object as different from all other verbs that use something other than a location as an object.

So, I think “locative verb” is a good idea to open one’s mind to the sometimes complex and arbitrary relationship between a verb and its objects, but I’m not sure it classifies enough verbs into one group to fully function as a useful classifier. I also think that it might group together verbs that don’t really work exactly the same way, and we might become tempted to think that they do when they don’t.

You have wisely stated in the past that I have oversimplified the concept of the relationship between Klingon verbs and objects, putting unjustified weight on the term “direct object”. At the time, I honestly thought you were wrong, but Okrand has proven you correct as he explained how the verb suffix {-moH} works. I know I’m still confused about this, and my stubbornness doesn’t help, but clearly, you understood objects better than I did for many years, in terms of the flexibility of the relationship between a verb and its potential objects. There are a wider class of objects than I was believing to be the case, and the term “direct object” doesn’t really work in Klingon. Okrand evaded the term, himself, and I never understood that. I’m really only beginning to understand it, after all these years, and mostly, I admit, I just understand that I misunderstand. I don’t pretend to know the details.

With {ghoS} as a good example, the verb means to move along a path. The glosses suggest this, but they don’t really explain it very well. The direct object is a noun that indicates the path you are on. It can be the destination, or the point of origin, or the path itself if the path has a name, or it can be some other noun the path passes through. If there is an actual locative {-Daq} on a noun, it tends to not indicate the path, but the location of the subject as it moves along the path, like saying, “I’m driving to California in my car.” Translated into Klingon, the car would get the {-Daq} suffix because that’s your location, while you travel along a California path. California doesn’t get a {-Daq}.

In the examples here, mountains apparently function as objects for the verb {Sal}. So, you can ascend a mountain. You don’t need {-Daq}. You are not ascending to the mountain. You are ascending the mountain. Likely, if mountain had {-Daq} on it, it would be not the object of the verb, but instead simply a location where the ascending is happening. This is not the same thing as having the mountain be the object of “ascend”.

It’s not the case that a locative suffix can optionally be used on the object of the verb. It’s that a noun with a locative feature is the direct object of the verb. Location, for these verbs, is a semantic reference, not a syntactic one. The location of the object is what we are using the object for, but there is no grammatical indicator that this noun is a location. Any grammatical locative gives a grammatical reference to the location of the action of the verb. It does not function as an object of the verb. You are right about this, and the person who suggested that {-Daq} is optional didn’t understand how this works.

This is similar to the English difference between “The Moon orbits the Earth,” vs. “The Moon goes around the Earth.” In the former, the Earth is the object of “orbit”, but in the latter, the Earth is part of a prepositional phrase telling where the going happens. The Earth is not the object of “go”.

My frustration with the glossed definitions in TKD is that it rarely gives us enough information to fully understand the verbs because it is only in the use of the verbs in canon that we get to witness the specifics of the relationship between a verb and its potential objects, and we get so few canon examples that we have to use most verbs without really knowing how they work with authority. We had to ask Okrand to find out if {vIH} took an object. It doesn’t. {vIHmoH} takes an object. In English, you can move (yourself) or you can cause something else to move, and use the same verb in both cases. I moved out of my wife’s way. I moved the box out of my wife’s way. In Klingon {jIvIH}, but {‘etlh vIvIHmoH}.

The gloss in the dictionary doesn’t really tell you that.

So, we hobble along as best we can with the limited details, and we pay attention to canon to fill in what he otherwise doesn’t tell us. He has kept things vague so that he can, himself, when he needs to, use existing vocabulary to say things he wasn’t necessarily expecting to have to say when he wrote the dictionary entry. I understand that. Still, it leaves us in a more awkward place than if he had been more specific.

As years pass, we learn more and more, and we get better at this. There are fewer episodes of us having to go back and realize that we’d been wrong when we made assumptions earlier.

charghwI’ ‘utlh



> On Feb 11, 2019, at 2:08 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
> On 2/11/2019 1:55 PM, Steven Boozer wrote:
>> Known examples of {Sal} “ascend” and {ghIr} “descend”, all from the paq’batlh:
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> SaqSub'e' muSHa'bogh pawmeH leng qeylIS, HuDmey Sal ghIq ghIr 
>> And Kahless traveled to his beloved Saq'sub, over the mountains (PB)
>> 
>> QIStaq 'emDaq jenchoH jul, yor DungDaq Salta'DI' tagh HarghchuqmeH poH 
>> The sun rises high behind the Kri'stak, when it rises over its top, it is time to do battle. (PB)
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> HuDmeyvo' ghIr chaH 
>> Over the hills, they came. (PB)
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> From these three examples – all referring to mountains or hills - it appears that the locative suffix is optional.
>> 
> Not optional. In the first example, the object is the thing climbed, not the destination. In the second and third, the verbs in question do not have any object, but take the destination or origin as a non-object syntactic noun. (I am assuming these are not examples of "redundant, but not out-and-out wrong" uses of syntactic suffixes.)
> 
> In no example is the destination the object of the verb, which is what would be required for the verb's meaning to "include locative notions."
> 
> -- 
> SuStel
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