Okrand has consistently avoided using the words “transitive” or “intransitive”. He didn’t mark this sort of thing in TKD.
It's usually not so simple. English verbs, for instance, usually
have both transitive and intransitive senses. What we don't get in
The Klingon Dictionary are senses.
It’s long been a frustration for me because I honestly believe that you can’t understand a verb well until you know its relationship with acceptable direct objects. The relationship between the verb and its direct object is part of the meaning of the verb, and most of the time, this is part of the definition of verbs that we don’t get from Okrand. We just have to watch for it in canon, and even then, it’s not always consistent.
More than that: we have to try to understand all the arguments of
a verb. Sometimes it's not clear what the subject of a
verb should be, let alone any objects.
SuStel has long made this point from a different angle, and I’ve agued in favor of some kind of clarified, systematic approach, while he’s tended to defend a looser acceptance of a wider range of possibilities in terms of objects of verbs. Over time, I’ve worn down and just accept that we just do the best we can.
I find it amusing that most people think I'm the uber-strict,
slippery-slope-ignoring grammar police, while you think I'm a
hippy-dippy grammar defiler.
Maybe {qID} can use {‘e’} as its direct object. If you don’t like that, then you can treat it like one of the verbs that almost makes it to the list of speech words, but doesn’t quite. {qID Qanqor. jatlh <peng baHmeH qarDaSngan ‘ar poQlu’?>}
I hadn't considered 'e' or net as the object of qID, but once De'vID suggested it, it made sense.
Another verb that I think really only works with an 'e'
or net object is Hech intend, mean to.
I’m guessing that when Okrand includes an explicit noun in the gloss, it probably is similar to English verbs that have an implied direct object that can be stated explicitly, but doesn’t really need to. A moon orbits. What does it orbit. Well, it orbits a planet. That’s what makes it a moon. A moon doesn’t orbit a star. It would be a planet, if it did that.
Whenever Okrand is writing for a word-list, as opposed to conversationally explaining a word, he includes an explicit noun on a verb where the English translation has more than once sense, and he's disambiguating which sense he means.
baH fire (torpedo, rocket, missile) — as opposed to
fire someone from their job or fire a kiln.
bIv break (rules) — as opposed to breaking a piece
of glass.
cha' show, display (picture) — as opposed to showing
or displaying a statue in a gallery.
chIp cut, trim (hair) — as opposed to cutting other
things like meat or wood.
chu' engage, activate (a device) — not sure about
this one, maybe it's to distinguish engage from something
like engaging in conversation. Activate has other senses, but
they're too esoteric to have needed disambiguation.
Dan occupy (military term) — as opposed to being
inside something. No one would misunderstand "military term" as
being the object of Dan.
ghoS one of the translations is follow (a course) —
as opposed to following someone into the Great Barrier.
He' smell, emit odor — as opposed to emitting sounds
or exhaust. This one doesn't even bother with parentheses, because
the main sense of the word comes from odor, not emit.
And so on.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name