On 6/17/2022 12:48 PM, Will Martin wrote:
I’ll go farther and share that I think that {jatlh} originally was supposed to take languages or speeches as object and {ja’} was originally supposed to have people as object (hence {ja’chuq} is a word in the word list and {jatlhchuq} is not),
I don't think so. I think *ja'* being glossed /tell, report/ suggests that something like a status report was always a possible meaning. This is backed up by the fact that one of the lines in /Star Trek III/ is Kruge saying "Report status!" and both *ja'* and *Dotlh* are in the original edition of the dictionary. I'll bet that Okrand had a translated version at hand just in case it was asked for: *Dotlh ja'!* I also think that *qaja'pu'* is an early sign of Okrand either not thinking about or (possibly intentionally) not distinguishing between direct and indirect objects in Klingon. I don't think it was ever the case that the one and only possible object of *ja'* is the entity being spoken to. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name