[tlhIngan Hol] *-Daq* / *-vo'* - Three questions about the *paq'batlh*

[Will Martin]

I fully acknowledge that you may be right. 

In the past, I argued that the direct object of {jatlh} has to be a language or utterance, while the direct object of {ja’} has to be the person receiving the utterance. I honestly believe this was Okrand’s original intent, since {ja’chuq} can only have persons doing the reciprocal exchange of speech, and we haven’t seen {*jatlhchuq} anywhere in canon or in the dictionary, and the glosses heavily suggest as much, but he later got mushy about this, likely screwed up creating canon, and alakazam, you can {jatlh} a person and you can {ja’} a language or utterance, and I think the language is worse for it. We don’t have a vocabulary so large that the relationship between verbs and their peculiar direct objects should be glommed together like this.

Similarly, we clearly have a word {jaH} which has as its object the destination, and we have {ghoS} which has the path/road/course as its direct object. The whole reason we need two different verbs for this is their relationship with their special direct object.

We also have the general rule that a noun with {-Daq} in all of the most common instances gives the location where the action of the verb occurs. A very small number of verbs have locations or paths as their direct object, and these special verbs deserve special attention and clarity.

So, since people get confused about the meaning of [x]Daq because of [x]-vo’, and the gloss includes “to”, we muddy things up by saying, “Don’t worry your pointy little head about this. Just let it all glom together. It can be the location of the action OR the destination of the action with {ghoS} because it’s easier to declare that than it is to remember this every time he writes canon, and gee, he might mess up, so let’s just keep it all messy. Natural languages are all messy, so keeping this messy is a good thing, right?

Meanwhile, what you write will be clearer and cleaner if you use {jaH} for destinations and {ghoS} for course/path/road. Be as vague and messy as you like. Someone should point out obviously better use of specific verbs.

That really is the beginning and end of why I bother commenting on this. I’m not talking about what is right and what is wrong. I’m talking about what is better and clearer, and what is worse and messier. It’s not a law. It’s just an opinion, since my strange interest in this strange language is in having it prove that it’s mature enough to express things clearly, which is clearly a minority interest here. Perhaps a minority of one.

I’d like to think it’s not a hobby language that exists primarily to be poked and stretched, rather than actually used to express anything, but it’s probably a foolish thought.

pItlh

charghwI’ ‘utlh
(ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)




> On Aug 3, 2023, at 9:08 AM, SuStel via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org> wrote:
> 
> On 8/3/2023 7:40 AM, luis.chaparro--- via tlhIngan-Hol wrote:
>>> {vengDaq taw vIghoS} means “I’m traveling along a road in the city.” It does not mean “I’m traveling along a road toward the city.” “Toward the city” is a direction, not a location. If you want to indicate that you are going toward the city, you are using the wrong verb. {taw vIghoS. veng vIjaH}.
>> I'm sorry but I don't think I'm getting the point here. I thought *-Daq* expresses a location or a destination depending on context. De'vID and SuStel agreed, if I've understood them well, that the sentence *vengDaq taw vIghoS* can be translated *I go along the road in the city* (*vengDaq* expressing a location where something happens) or *I go along the road toward the city* (*vengDaq* expressing a destination where I'm moving to). SuStel also interpreted *ghe'tor lojmIt'a'Daq 'Iw bIQtIq ghoS* as *He goes along the River of Blood toward the great gates of Gre'thor*.
>>  
>> Am I missing something?
> I think charghwI' is being unnecessarily restrictive on the meaning of a non-object noun with -Daq before the verb ghoS. He's assuming it never means a destination, only the place where the going happens. I argue that this is the case of jaH, where the object of the verb is the destination, so any other locative non-object noun in the sentence cannot also be the destination, but it is not the case with ghoS, where the object is the course followed, not necessarily the destination, so the role of destination remains open to non-object -Daq nouns.
> 
> -- 
> SuStel
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