[tlhIngan Hol] "Prefix trick" with third-person verb prefixes

[Will Martin]

In line, below.

pItlh

charghwI’ ‘utlh
(ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)




> On Oct 1, 2024, at 10:03 AM, SuStel via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org> wrote:
> 
> On 9/30/2024 11:08 PM, Will Martin via tlhIngan-Hol wrote:
>> You don’t seem to understand the prefix trick at all.
>> 
>> In English, I can say, “I gave the apple to you,” or I can say, “I gave you the apple.” That’s really the core of the prefix trick in Klingon. In either case, the apple is the direct object of the verb “gave” and “you" is the indirect object. If you just go by strict rules of English grammar and extract “I gave you…” out of the sentence, you’d tend to assume that “you" is the direct object, but seeing the whole sentence, you know better.
> The grammars of English and Klingon in this example are completely different.
> 
The common interpretation of the grammar is, indeed, completely different. Meanwhile, prepositional concepts and objects, direct and indirect, are often arbitrary, depending on the verb.

In this case, “I gave the apple to you,” and “I gave you the apple,” have exactly the same meaning, even though “to you” expresses the indirect object as a prepositional phrase, while the plain “you” preceding “apple” expresses it as nothing that can be explained in any way except as indirect object. Word order alone tells you it’s the indirect object.

Different verbs use different prepositions (including what we might call the “null” preposition, if we were to use Klingon grammatical terms) to link them to their direct and indirect objects. It’s the “The Moon orbits the Earth,” vs. “The Moon orbits around the Earth,” and “The Moon goes around the Earth,” but it can’t be “The Moon Goes the Earth,” thing.
> First let's look at the English. There are two ways we can say this:
> 
> I gave the apple to you.
> 
> Here, the apple is the direct object. There is no indirect object. Instead, we have a preposition, to, which has an object, you. The you is not the indirect object of the verb gave.
> 
> I gave you the apple.
> 
> Here, the apple remains the direct object, but you is now the indirect object. In English, the indirect object comes between the verb and the direct object.
> 
> Now for Klingon. Here, we also have two ways to say this:
> 
> SoHvaD 'epIl naH vInoppu'.
> 
> Here, 'epIl naH is the object (never mind direct or indirect; it's the "object"). SoHvaD is the beneficiary. Semantically, these words play the same roles as the direct and indirect objects, respectively, in English, but in Klingon the roles are "object" and "beneficiary."
> 
> 'epIl naH qanobpu'.
> 
> Here, 'epIl naH remains the object (again, never mind worrying about direct or indirect; it's the "object"), but the beneficary has disappeared. Instead, we get the prefix trick, using a prefix that does not agree with the object. This tells us that the prefix trick is being used, and it tells us that the indirect object of the sentence, what would normally be the beneficiary, is SoH.
> 
The validity of your argument doesn’t invalidate mine. We both know that both versions of the sentences in question, in English and in Klingon have identical meaning. The grammarians who analyze these sentences have invented grammatical rules to explain what the words are doing, and that analysis could have easily been arbitrarily different. Actual languages don’t follow rules. They merely imply them.

It’s like a bridge you can’t see the structure of. You see that it’s standing. Obviously, it is supported. You come up with a theoretical structure that could hold up the bridge, and so long as every bridge you find could be held up by the theoretical structure you have invented, you assume that the structure is a valid description of what is holding up the bridge.

Meanwhile, it’s excellently possible that a completely different structure is doing the work, and you might find a bridge tomorrow that can’t be held up by the structural rules you’ve been using. You get a glimpse of the difference between the real bridge and the one you had imagined.

All it takes is for Okrand to give you a new, canon sentence that violates what you thought was the grammar. Nobody should pretend this has never happened.

>> {SoHvaD chab vInob. chab qanob.}
>> 
>> The prefix {qa-} suggests that “you" is the direct object (when “you” is actually the indirect object), similar to the examples in English.
> The word that comes before the verb is the "object," not the "direct object." Sometimes you can distinguish the English role of direct or indirect object for the Klingon "object," but to Klingon, it's just an "object."
> 
You like to bring this up, except when you like to use the term “direct object”, yourself.

>> For one thing, plurality doesn’t tend to play into the prefix trick. The prefix trick typically uses “person” to reveal itself. First or second person subject and an indicated second or first person direct object shown in the prefix, but an explicit noun in the 3rd person in the word-order position of direct object. That’s the classic prefix trick.
> Except our definition of the prefix trick was expanded a couple of years ago. See the message the OP referenced. Specifically, if there's no possibility of confusion, third-person prefixes may also be used for the prefix trick. The given example is lujang for they answer him.
> 
> We were also told that the earlier revelation about the prefix trick, the one specifying first- and second-person object prefixes, was simplified for brevity.
> 
And this is exactly what I was just talking about.

Full disclosure, I was using 1st & 2nd person for the same reason. It is SO much more common for the prefix trick to be used when 1st or 2nd person is the subject and the indirect object, but the direct object is 3rd person, that in terms of learning how to use the prefix trick and recognize it, acting as if that were the whole thing would leave you excellently capable of using and recognizing the prefix trick more than 90% of the time, and after you’ve successfully gotten that under your belt, you’d be ready to take on {‘epIl naH Dunob} and just see that it works.

I’ve never encountered plurality alone marking the indirect object among 3rd person direct and indirect object. I hadn’t considered it. If you say Okrand says it’s fine, then obviously it’s fine. There he goes, changing the bridge. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s his bridge. Thanks for the update. Klingon grammar just got a little harder. {wejpuH.}

>> The prefix says “I [verb] you” or “You [verb] me”, but there’s an extra unmarked noun before the verb jumping up and down, yelling, “I’m the real direct object!”
> Explicit nouns are the actual objects; prefixes merely agree with objects. Assuming it's not an error, if the prefix doesn't agree with the object that's sitting right there, then it is agreeing with an unstated indirect object.
> 
Given how heavily you’d be relying on context to identify the indirect object in such a case, compared to how easy it is to identify the 1st or 2nd person indirect object, I think I can do just fine never using this new grammar example. I’d probably just point to the indirect object and say the sentence without the prefix trick, or use {-‘e’} or {-vaD} on the indirect object.

It’s also such a limited extension of what we’ve known for so long, given the limited differentiation of explicit 3rd person plurality in the prefix set. Most of the time you’d like to use it, you can’t because the direct object and indirect object would have the same plurality and person, or would have a pairing for which there is no different prefix. You’d be especially clever to use this well every rare now and then, but is it really useful while actually speaking Klingon?

And this, in the same language where screwing up the use or omission of {lu-} is so common as for it to be laughable for you to rely on it being done right in order to notice that, “Oh! I get it! You didn’t use it wrong! You are doing the prefix trick!"

That’s what inspires the {wejpuH} response. Here, among Klingon speakers you are more likely to have puzzled looks because they think you used the prefix wrong, or they’ll just ignore what they thought was your mistake. It would be quite rare that someone would interpret this use of the prefix trick correctly.

>> {loDnI’Daj vavDaj je ja’ qeylIS} is not an example of the prefix trick. It’s just a common Klingon grammatical error.
> It is not an error. It is evidence that Klingon verbs take "objects" as arguments, not "direct objects." You have never let go of this desperate idea that Klingon verb arguments are strictly split between direct and indirect objects. They're not. Direct and indirect object are not syntactic roles in Klingon; they are syntactic roles in English that are sometimes used to describe things that are happening semantically in Klingon. The relevant Klingon syntactic roles in this topic are "object" and "beneficiary.”
> 
If you say so, it must be true. Thanks for the clarification.

For me, “direct object” and “indirect object” are merely useful terms to explain different kinds of objects, similar to the way Klingon separates some objects out explicitly as beneficiary, topic/focus, locative, etc. 

Yes, I understand that “direct object” is not specially different from the other kinds of objects. The only thing that marks it as different is… the lack of any marker. No Type 5 suffix. It is “marked” by word order alone, and that can be confusing because of the collision of clauses in a complex sentence, or because of noun-noun constructions, and I’m sure there are other settings in which it is obscure.

You like to think that I’m seeing things wrong and you are seeing things right. I think many times, we see things more alike than you feel. We just hang up on differences of description and focus.

I genuinely thank you for opening my understanding of Okrand’s newer thoughts on the prefix trick. Otherwise, I’d continue on, in ignorance of one of the least useful grammatical structures I’ve ever encountered in Klingon: The prefix trick with both direct and indirect objects being 3rd person.

ghojlaH chargwhI’.

pab ghantoHmey chu’ lughojmoH SuStel ‘oqranD je.
> -- 
> SuStel
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