On 2/2/2018 5:35 AM, Lieven L. Litaer wrote:
Okrand did not say "MUST always" take an object, he just says that it "would be weird not to" have one.
Think of the English verb "love". You can say "I love you" and "I love cookies" - but just saying "I love." seems weird, doesn't it? And I'm sure there are words much weirder to say without object.
But /weird/ doesn't mean /rare./ There are perfectly understandable reasons why one might use the verb /love/ without an object: "Oh, please. Don't let them take me. I can't even touch them! Janice, they can't feel. Not like you! They don't love!" I don't think Okrand is saying *rang* is only objectless in rare cases. /Weird/ means that while there's no actual rule requiring any verb take an object, *rang* really /needs/ an object to make sense. Same with *ngI'*, which someone else quoted. The difference, though, with *rang* versus *ngI'* is that I can easily understand what *rang* without an object would mean: /be responsible for things in general;/ while *ngI'* without an object truly is weird: /have a weight of a general measurement?/ But Okrand says *rang* without an object is weird, so we must accept that Klingons find it so. So I think it IS ungrammatical to use *rang* without an object, but it is ungrammatical SEMANTICALLY, not syntactically. There is no syntactic rule that says a verb must have an object, but the particular meaning of *rang* forces it to have an object. To leave off an object is not syntactically incorrect, but it is still wrong. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name