On Wed, Oct 4, 2017 at 3:58 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:No. In jIHvaD qab, nothing has happened to you. The subject of qab has had a quality described, but it has not acted upon you in any way. Here jIH is a benefactive, not an indirect object.
Nothing has happened to you (plural) when I Sa'ang my heart either, except possibly that I have caused photons of certain wavelengths to enter your eyes.
Yes it has: you have seen. You received a visual image or a
presentation. Linguistically, this is receiving something, which
is something happening to you. Similarly, if I say tIqwIj vI'ang,
tIqwIj is the direct object, which means the verb
acts directly on my heart. Literally, I only let it be seen, but
linguistically revealing my heart means I perform the action reveal
directly on the direct object, my heart.
Meanwhile, TKD doesn't mention indirect objects or an indirect object meaning of -vaD until the second edition and the Addendum is published with it. Here it tells us, not that since -vaD means "indirect object" that we should use it for indirect objects; it's prescribing for us a new rule: you can signal an indirect object by slapping a -vaD on it, because Klingons consider the recipient of an action someone whom the action is intended for. This was not deducible prior to the second edition TKD and the canon that led to it
I am skeptical that using -vaD for the recipient of an action was not deducible prior to the addendum being published. Both of the examples in TKDa can be interpreted even when translating -vaD as a beneficiary marker. Was there actually some Usenet discussion in the intervening years where -vaD as an indirect object marker was considered too controversial to use? Or where the topic of indirect objects came up and nobody thought of -vaD?
Don't take my statement too strongly. I don't mean to say there was no way anybody could have come up with -vaD for a recipient; I'm saying that what is described in pre-addendum TKD does not have much of anything to do with indirect objects or recipients of actions.
Yes, you could have taken "intended for" and decided "I give this knife, and the giving is intended for you," and gotten -vaD out of that. But it doesn't mean quite the same thing as an indirect object, which is "I give this knife, and you are the recipient." Benefactives are about the verb being for someone; indirect objects are about the direct object being for someone.
I wasn't studying Klingon out of the dictionary before the second
edition was published, so I can't say what online discussions
might have taken place.
To me, that section reads more like a clarification on how existing Klingon grammar is used to express a common bit of English syntax, described using English grammar terms, rather than describing an entirely new use or meaning of the suffix.
As I said, benefactive and indirect object are related. It's not
an entirely new meaning; it's a related meaning. But it's
definitely something the first edition of the dictionary didn't
provide for. I don't think Okrand is telling you how to translate
English turns of phrase into already-known Klingon; I think he's
adding an additional semantic role of "indirect object" that
didn't exist before, and could only be approximated with the
original explanation of -vaD.
(Similar to how Okrand described tlhej as being used to translate the idea of "with", without implying some kind of distinction between tlhej when it's used to translate "with" vs. when it's not.)
That's just an issue of techniques of translation, not the
meaning of morphemes or semantics or syntax. My talk of -vaD
has to do with purely Klingon grammar, without discussing
translations into other languages.
The varying ways in which Okrand has described using -vaD over the years (as an "indirect object" or not) seem more like casual inconsistency in terminology rather than hints at some deeper underlying semantic distinction.
There certainly is inconsistency in his terminology, and not only
with the -vaD issues. But he has only used the prefix
trick for indirect objects and never for benefactives.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name