[tlhIngan Hol] vIb - propagate

[De'vID]

On Sun, 29 Mar 2020 at 11:36, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:

> Am 29.03.2020 um 09:11 schrieb De'vID:
> > Because the definition is "propagate", not "propagate in/through"?
> > Although, looking at the examples, we have:
> > {wa'vatlh DIS vIvIb} "I time-travel 100 years into the future"
> >
> > This indicates that the object of {vIb} is the distance,
>
> theoretically, who says that this is a distance? Maybe it's thing being
> travelled through, like in English "time".
>

Because "100 years" is composed of a number and a unit, and "time" is not?


> compare this
> {wa' jaj vIvIb} - "I time-travel [through] one day"
> and
> {wa' bIQ'a' vIvIb} - "I propagate [through] one ocean"
>

That *might* be possible, but it's overgeneralising the example. A "day"
(assuming prior context establishes whether you're talking about an Earth
day or a Qo'noS day and so on) is a fixed unit of time, whereas a {bIQ'a'}
is not a fixed unit of distance in general.

> 'otlhmey} "the photons propagated the ocean (i.e., the length? width?
> > area? of the ocean)", though I wouldn't write it that way.
>
> This is grammatically identical. Why not semantically?
>

For the exact same reason that, in the pair of English sentences "the
photons propagated two meters" and "the photons propagated water", the
former is a sensible sentence and the latter is not. *Maybe* in Klingon
both sentences are possible, but this is not obvious from either the
definition or the given examples.


> Again, I need to add that I am asking this because I do not entirely
> understand the English word.  But Maybe this is one of the things that
> need some explanation from Maltz.
>

I think the given definitions and examples are *sufficient* for us to
express the idea of "propagation through a medium". Clearly, Maltz can
clarify whether there is more generality or flexibility than was given, but
that is true of many, many verbs in the dictionary, and "propagate" would
be low on any reasonable priority list of verbs needing such clarification.

-- 
De'vID
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