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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 8/3/2023 12:02 PM, Will Martin via
tlhIngan-Hol wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:F15BD350-21A8-4714-A5C0-84EC93E69276@gmail.com">
<div>I fully acknowledge that you may be right. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>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 <b>qaja'</b>
and don't know any other examples of how <b>ja'</b> works, you
can't tell just from the syntax whether the <b>qa-</b> is agree
with a direct or indirect object. Only when you consider what the
word <b>ja'</b> means can you start to piece together what the
verb prefix is pointing at, and that's not a syntactic argument.</p>
<p>Furthermore, you're assuming that <b>-chuq</b> 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 <b>ja'chuq</b>
doesn't imply anything about the proper object of <b>ja',</b>
because it <i>has</i> no object. It only has a plural subject. We
don't see <b>jatlhchuq</b> in canon not because it is
syntactically illegal, but because it makes no semantic sense. You
don't say <b>jatlhchuq</b> for the same reason you don't say <b>quS
HoH</b> <i>kill a chair</i> — because the concept makes no
sense, not because it's syntactically disallowed. If we found a
situation where <b>jatlhchuq</b> 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.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:F15BD350-21A8-4714-A5C0-84EC93E69276@gmail.com">
<div>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.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>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 <b>jaH</b> took the destination of going as its
object, and that any other non-object locative on <b>jaH</b>
would be interpreted as a not-destination.</p>
<p>I don't think the <b>jaH/ghoS</b> distinction was at all clear
to Okrand until then. We got contradictory examples: <b>jolpa'
yIjaH</b> (the destination is the object; is it clipped?); <b>vaS'a'Daq
majaHlaH'a'</b><i> </i>(the destination is not the object,
clearly demonstrated by the verb prefix).</p>
<p>I think the difference between <b>jaH</b> and <b>ghoS</b> in
Okrand's mind was that <b>ghoS</b> was the verb you used for
ships setting courses, while <b>jaH</b> was the verb you used for
more general <i>go</i>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.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:F15BD350-21A8-4714-A5C0-84EC93E69276@gmail.com">
<div>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.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>But that's not how they split. <b>-Daq</b> is <i>in, at, by,
to, toward.</i> 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: <b>jolpa'(Daq) jaH; nImbuS wej(Daq) ghoS.</b>
Verbs that don't include inherent locative senses can still use
nouns with <b>-Daq</b> that include destinations: <b>vaS'a'Daq
mayIt.</b> Because <b>-Daq</b> can mean all of <i>in, at, by,
to, toward,</i> <b>vaS'a'Daq mayIt</b> 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 <b>vaS'a'Daq
mayIt</b> can only mean <i>We walk IN the Great Hall.</i><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:F15BD350-21A8-4714-A5C0-84EC93E69276@gmail.com">
<div>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?</div>
</blockquote>
<p>But that's not what we're saying, and it's not true. <b>-Daq</b>
<i>does</i> 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 <b>-Daq:</b> <b>jolpa'Daq
yIjaH</b> forces <b>jolpa'Daq</b> to mean <i>to the transport
room,</i> not <i>in the transport room</i> or <i>by the
transport room.</i><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
SuStel
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://trimboli.name">http://trimboli.name</a></pre>
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