On 8/15/2019 11:50 AM, Will Martin wrote:
I remember there being a time that Okrand explained that the difference between {jatlh} and {ja’} was that the direct object of {jatlh} was the language or the text being spoken, while the object of {ja’} was the person being addressed.
I do not believe he has ever outright stated what the object of *ja'* should be. On the other hand, you yourself once interviewed him (http://klingonska.org/canon/1998-12-holqed-07-4.txt) and stated that the typical object of *ja'* would be the person addressed, and he never responded to that. He has, however, talked about what the object of *jatlh* should be (http://klingonska.org/canon/1997-06-29a-news.txt), and it's the language being spoken or a word referring to the speech (like *SoQ*/speech, lecture, address/). It's not the actual words; those are quoted as per TKD's section on sentences as objects. The indirect object of *jatlh,* he also said, is the listener. In canon, Okrand has only ever used a word like *lut* as the object of *ja'.* He has never explicitly used a person as its object. He's used prefixes that indicate a person being reported to, but there's no way to distinguish whether it's an elided direct object or a reference to in indirect object using the prefix trick. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name