On Wed, Oct 16, 2019 at 3:46 PM SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

I understand how the English means that; I don't see how the Klingon means that.

Simple: It means that, because Okrand has been using that Klingon construction to mean that. Either the Klingon sentences that use it are wrong, including the most famous Klingon aphorism, or he is using an additional meaning of -meH, besides "in order to", that he hasn't talked about.

Yes, I understand the "it just is" explanation. I understand and accept that the construction exists and is valid, and I understand that Okrand can arbitrarily declare that something is so. That's not my problem. My problem is that there is no "purpose" in this kind of purpose clause.

Whenever Okrand expands some grammatical point, it's always based in some way on the meaning of the original grammar. When he expanded -vaD to include indirect objects, he was building on the original idea of a beneficiary. ("While the object of the verb is the recipient of the action, the indirect object may be considered the beneficiary.") He didn't just make it up out of whole cloth. When he expanded the idea of the "topic" suffix -'e' to include disambiguating a relative clause, it's not difficult to see how the -'e' draws our attention to the head noun as the important part of the clause.

But with qIpmeH Qatlh or Heghlu'meH QaQ we have little or no link to any kind of purpose. At best you could say, if your purpose is hitting, that target is difficult; if your purpose is dying, today is good. But why aren't these Qatlh qIpmeH DoS and QaQ Heghlu'meH jajvam?

But when you consider these to be overly literal translation from English, everything suddenly makes sense. A phrase like difficult to hit sounds like it's made up of be difficult and in order to hit, but that's not what the English is actually saying. English just happens to have a construction of adjective+infinitive that is a way of restricting the scope of the adjective. It's not a purpose.

Again, I accept that this purpose clause + verb of quality construction exists in Klingon. I see it there in black and white. I'm just saying we don't have a good explanation for why it means what it means, and as such, it makes a lousy set of data points when analyzing the role of purpose clauses in sentences.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name