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

[SuStel]

On 8/3/2023 12:02 PM, Will Martin via tlhIngan-Hol wrote:
> 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.

But your assumption rests on your unwavering belief that the noun 
argument that goes before the verb is the "direct object" instead of the 
"object." We have lots of evidence now that shows that that noun 
position doesn't make a sharp distinction between direct and indirect 
objects. We know that the verb prefix can agree with an indirect object 
instead of a direct object, even if there is no explicit noun present to 
agree with. When you see *qaja'* and don't know any other examples of 
how *ja'* works, you can't tell just from the syntax whether the *qa-* 
is agree with a direct or indirect object. Only when you consider what 
the word *ja'* means can you start to piece together what the verb 
prefix is pointing at, and that's not a syntactic argument.

Furthermore, you're assuming that *-chuq* involves treating the subject 
as its own object, but in fact TKD says no such thing. All that's 
required is that the subject be plural and that the verb prefix agree 
with "no object." Seeing the word *ja'chuq* doesn't imply anything about 
the proper object of *ja',* because it /has/ no object. It only has a 
plural subject. We don't see *jatlhchuq* in canon not because it is 
syntactically illegal, but because it makes no semantic sense. You don't 
say *jatlhchuq* for the same reason you don't say *quS HoH* /kill a 
chair/ — because the concept makes no sense, not because it's 
syntactically disallowed. If we found a situation where *jatlhchuq* made 
sense — maybe a nightmarish Picassoesque setting where the person you're 
speaking to comes out of your mouth when you speak to them — then you 
could say it.


> 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 got those words with TKD, and they were anything but clear. We had to 
wait until your interview with Okrand in HolQeD before we learned that 
*jaH* took the destination of going as its object, and that any other 
non-object locative on *jaH* would be interpreted as a not-destination.

I don't think the *jaH/ghoS* distinction was at all clear to Okrand 
until then. We got contradictory examples: *jolpa' yIjaH* (the 
destination is the object; is it clipped?); *vaS'a'Daq 
majaHlaH'a'*//(the destination is not the object, clearly demonstrated 
by the verb prefix).

I think the difference between *jaH* and *ghoS* in Okrand's mind was 
that *ghoS* was the verb you used for ships setting courses, while *jaH* 
was the verb you used for more general /go/ing, and it had nothing to do 
with distinguishing courses and destinations as objects. Most of the 
vocabulary in TKD revolves around either Star Trek situations involving 
Klingons, phrases that show up in tourist language books, or objects 
that Okrand could look around the room and notice. I think he was 
confronted by KLI members wanting the seeming contradictory canon 
explained, and he found an explanation that fit almost everything that 
he had written up to that point.


> 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.

But that's not how they split. *-Daq* is /in, at, by, to, toward./ How 
it's understood depends on context and the verb. In this sense, there 
are exactly two types of verbs: verbs that include inherent locative 
senses, and verbs that don't. Verbs that include inherent locative 
senses are those that can take a locative object: *jolpa'(Daq) jaH; 
nImbuS wej(Daq) ghoS.* Verbs that don't include inherent locative senses 
can still use nouns with *-Daq* that include destinations: *vaS'a'Daq 
mayIt.* Because *-Daq* can mean all of /in, at, by, to, toward,/ 
*vaS'a'Daq mayIt* is ambiguous as to whether the Great Hall is your 
destination or the site of your walking. More context is needed. But it 
is not the case that *vaS'a'Daq mayIt* can only mean /We walk IN the 
Great Hall./


> 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?

But that's not what we're saying, and it's not true. *-Daq* /does/ 
include locations of action AND destination all in one "locative" 
package. A verb with an inherent locative sense might single out a 
particular meaning of that *-Daq:* *jolpa'Daq yIjaH* forces *jolpa'Daq* 
to mean /to the transport room,/ not /in the transport room/ or /by the 
transport room./


-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name
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