[tlhIngan Hol] Transitivity of qID

[Lieven L. Litaer]

Am 08.05.2019 um 01:02 schrieb De'vID:
> At the Saarbrücken qepHom in 2011, Okrand gave some guidelines for what
> verbs take what objects.

I like the way boQwI' does it. It marks confirmed transitivity and gives
a comment on whther the verb may take an object. It's true that it's
mostly just a guess and may be wrong, but still a good sugestion for
beginners. Still better than saying we don't know all over the place.

> However, Okrand never wrote down these guidelines and only gave them
> verbally (AFAIK), so I suppose they don't have the authority of canon.

Lots of words and information has been collected verbally. I would
definitely accept that, as long as such information comes from a
reliable person, i.e. someone known from this group or the KLI, instead
of an unknown author who claims to have heard the Klingon word for
"mermaid" somewhere.

> Also, even if he did write them down, I'm sure people would still argue
> about whether any particular verb's definition fits the pattern.

General statements are always difficult to match all the words. That's
why the intro of TKD says "although words like 'always' are used,..."

> seems pretty clear to me that {qID} *can* take an object, but maybe it's
> debatable whether it's {'e'} ("joke" is like "pretend"), {qID} ("make a
> joke" is like "play a game"), or both.

That's one point of a discussion that can only be solved through canon
examples.

My opinion is the opposite, that it does *not* have an object. First,
the transitive version would have brackets in its definition, as in
"tell (a joke)". My other point is - why was the verb qID not used in
Power Klingon? There's an entire chapter about jokes, and the phrase
only says {meb, lut tlhaQ DaSov'a'?} This would have been a perfect
place to use {qID}.

But as I said, this is also just my opinion.

--
Lieven L. Litaer
aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany"
http://www.klingonisch.de
http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/Jokes