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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/1/2024 12:51 PM, Will Martin via
tlhIngan-Hol wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:B3C32C70-DE5D-4291-8FD7-5F3B4D37CBC0@gmail.com">
<div>
<div>
<div>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.</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>No, prepositions do not link verbs with their direct or indirect
objects. The object of a preposition is not an argument to the
verb; it is an argument to the preposition. In <i>The moon goes
around the earth,</i> <i>the earth</i> is not an argument of <i>goes.</i>
It's not a direct or indirect object. <i>The earth</i> is the
object of <i>around.</i></p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:B3C32C70-DE5D-4291-8FD7-5F3B4D37CBC0@gmail.com">
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<div>
<div>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.</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Grammarians have invented different grammatical rules for how
these sentences work because these sentences work in different
ways. Grammatical rules are not arbitrary: they attempt to
describe the languages they're about. If a language works a
certain way, its grammar will look a certain way.</p>
<p>Semantic and syntax really are two different things, no matter
how much you want to ignore that difference.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:B3C32C70-DE5D-4291-8FD7-5F3B4D37CBC0@gmail.com">
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<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:D20912BF-5EA8-4673-8EB7-97EEE82E5C47@gmail.com">
<div>{SoHvaD chab vInob. chab qanob.}</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The prefix {qa-} suggests that “you" is the
direct object (when “you” is actually the indirect
object), similar to the examples in English.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>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."</p>
</div>
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</blockquote>
<div>You like to bring this up, except when you like to use
the term “direct object”, yourself.</div>
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</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Which I explained. You can use the terms "direct object" and
"indirect object" as they apply in English to describe the <i>semantics</i>
of what's happening in Klingon. But <i>syntactically,</i> you
can't. Syntactically, Klingon has objects and beneficiaries, not
direct objects and indirect objects.</p>
<p>For example: you'll twist yourself in knots trying to explain how
the canonical sentences <b>SengmeywIj vIja'laHbe'</b> <i>I
cannot speak of my tragedies</i> and <b>loDnI'Daj vavDaj je ja'
qeylIS</b><i> Kahless tells his father and brother</i> can
coexist in a single canonical document. If you just think in terms
of "direct objects," what's the proper direct object of <b>ja'</b>?
Is it the person being told something or the something that's
being told? Why does it keep changing?<br>
</p>
<p>You don't have to worry about that when you realize that "direct
object" is not a syntactic role in Klingon. There are just
"objects." In <b>SengmeywIj vIja'laHbe',</b> we have a sentence
where the object happens to be what in English we would consider
to be the direct object. In <b>loDnI'Daj vavDaj je ja' qeylIS,</b>
we have a sentence where the object happens to be what English
would consider to be the indirect object. It's no big deal if you
stop sticking the words "direct" and "indirect" into the sentence
where they weren't asked for. Unless you're actually describing
the difference between a thing acted upon and a thing for which an
action is performed, you don't need those terms.</p>
<p>This is why I sometimes turn to the words <i>patient, theme,
recipient,</i> and <i>beneficiary:</i> to make it plain that
I'm talking about a semantic role, not a syntactic one, because
people get confused by how direct and indirect objects can be a
syntactic role in one language and a semantic one in another.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:B3C32C70-DE5D-4291-8FD7-5F3B4D37CBC0@gmail.com">
<div>
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<div>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.</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Sure, but Luis's question was specifically going beyond a
beginner's understanding of the prefix trick and into exactly
these waters.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:B3C32C70-DE5D-4291-8FD7-5F3B4D37CBC0@gmail.com">
<div>
<div>
<div>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.}</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Okrand didn't say that particular thing was fine. He said that
you can use the prefix trick in the third person when it makes
sense and when the meaning is clear. There's no clear-cut rule
telling us when it's okay. It depends on the verb, it depends on
the context, it depends on the audience.</p>
<p>If you come across <b>tlhIngan Hol lujatlh chaH</b> and you have
doubts as to whether it means <i>They speak Klingon</i> or <i>They
say "Klingon language" to him,</i> then it's not an appropriate
use of the prefix trick because the meaning is not clear. Since <b>Hol</b>
and <b>jatlh</b> are so commonly associated with <b>Hol jatlh</b>
<i>speak a language,</i> I would not expect this sentence to be a
good use of the prefix trick if the meaning was supposed to be <i>They
say "Klingon language" to him.</i><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:B3C32C70-DE5D-4291-8FD7-5F3B4D37CBC0@gmail.com">
<div>
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<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:D20912BF-5EA8-4673-8EB7-97EEE82E5C47@gmail.com">
<div>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!” <br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Explicit nouns are the actual objects; prefixes
merely <i>agree</i> 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.</p>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>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.</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>*shrug*<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:B3C32C70-DE5D-4291-8FD7-5F3B4D37CBC0@gmail.com">
<div>
<div>
<div>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?</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>The rule is you can do it when it makes sense and when the
meaning is clear. Therefore, you don't have to be particularly
clever at saying it or understanding it. As it's been described to
us, if it's not easy, it's not appropriate.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:B3C32C70-DE5D-4291-8FD7-5F3B4D37CBC0@gmail.com">
<div>
<div>
<div>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.</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Then it's not an appropriate use of the prefix trick. As Okrand
said.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:B3C32C70-DE5D-4291-8FD7-5F3B4D37CBC0@gmail.com">
<div>
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<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:D20912BF-5EA8-4673-8EB7-97EEE82E5C47@gmail.com">
<div>{loDnI’Daj vavDaj je ja’ qeylIS} is not an
example of the prefix trick. It’s just a common
Klingon grammatical error.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>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.”</p>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
If you say so, it must be true. Thanks for the clarification.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>It's true because it's in <i>paq'batlh</i> and survived into the
second edition without change. Not because I say so.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:B3C32C70-DE5D-4291-8FD7-5F3B4D37CBC0@gmail.com">
<div>
<div>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. <br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Klingon calls beneficiary, topic, focus, and locative "syntactic"
roles, because in Klingon they are. They are syntactic markers in
Klingon: you mark nouns with suffixes to indicate these roles.
Klingon has other syntactic roles called "object" and "subject."
These are indicated by their positions before and after a verb in
a verbal clause, not by a suffix.</p>
<p>With syntax, you can know the roles of each word without knowing
what the word means. If I say <b>XvaD YDaq O V S'e',</b> we have
a wealth of syntactic knowledge without any semantic information.
We know that S, and only S, does <b>V</b> on or intended for O
(we don't know for sure which), at or around Y, for the benefit of
X. We have no idea what's going on, but we do know the
relationships of all the words to each other. That's syntax.</p>
<p>In that example, we don't know for sure whether A is a direct
object or an indirect object. In Klingon, the distinction doesn't
really matter. <b>O V S</b> simply means that S does something on
or intended for O. Examples with meaning are <b>tlhIngan Hol
vIjatlh jIH</b> (I act upon the Klingon language by speaking
it), where O is a direct object; and <b>vavDaj ja' ghaH</b> (his
act is intended for his father, which he performs by telling),
where O is an indirect object.</p>
<p>O is just an "object." Klingon doesn't syntactically distinguish
between direct and indirect object this way. It distinguishes
between object and beneficiary, and one <i>semantic</i> role of
the beneficiary is that of indirect object: the entity who
"receives" the action.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:B3C32C70-DE5D-4291-8FD7-5F3B4D37CBC0@gmail.com">
<div>
<div>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.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>And the point is that a noun in the O position without any suffix
is not <i>always</i> a direct object. Sometimes it is an indirect
object. It is especially common for prefix agreeing without any
explicit noun to indicate an indirect object, as in <b>qaja'pu'</b><i>
I told you.</i> The difference is <i>semantic,</i> so making <i>syntactic</i>
rules about direct and indirect objects to try to explain the
prefix trick won't work. (The same goes for <b>-moH</b>
sentences.)<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:B3C32C70-DE5D-4291-8FD7-5F3B4D37CBC0@gmail.com">
<div>
<div>I genuinely thank you for opening my understanding of
Okrand’s newer thoughts on the prefix trick.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>See them here:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/2022-June/063018.html">http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/2022-June/063018.html</a><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:B3C32C70-DE5D-4291-8FD7-5F3B4D37CBC0@gmail.com">
<div>
<div>pab ghantoHmey chu’ lughojmoH SuStel ‘oqranD je.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
Given the context of the above conversation and your misapprehension
that it has to do with mismatching plurals, the very fact that this
ordinarily wouldn't work makes it work. Since your audience <i>knows</i>
what you're doing when you do this, it's an appropriate use. If you
just walked up to someone and said it without context, it wouldn't
be appropriate, because it would be confusing. Your sarcastic
sendoff demonstrates the entire point.<br>
<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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