On 5/20/2022 11:25 AM, Will Martin wrote:
An indirect object (the linguistic term is apparently “beneficiary”, though I’m not a linguist and the detailed answer is probably more nuanced, as the more linguistically inclined will surely correct) is a specific kind of object.
/Beneficiary/ is a nontechnical description of what an indirect object is. /Indirect object/ is the linguistic term. It refers to whoever or whatever "receives" or is the "beneficiary" of the action or the result of the action. There is another term, /benefactive,/ which is a noun case that indicates someone who actually benefits from an action. Klingon *-vaD* puts nouns into the benefactive case. In Klingon, the benefactive case is also used to indicate an indirect object, which can be viewed as a subset of the benefactive: receiving the result of the action is like a kind of benefit. A direct object, on the other hand, is someone or something upon which the action is directed. The subject acts upon or toward the direct object. In Klingon, the "object" is /usually/ a direct object. You can say *taj vInob*/I give the knife/ (the knife is the direct object), but you cannot say *SoH qanob* /I give (something to) you/ (where you are the indirect object) or even just *qanob*. You can't say /I give you/ in English, either, if you intend /you/ to be an indirect object. But there are times when the object is more flexible. Whenever you use *-moH,* you have a choice: does the object continue to represent the patient acted upon by the agent (let's just assume patients and agents for now, rather than themes and experiencers and so on), or does it represent the receiver (indirect object) of the result of the agent acting upon the patient? It can be either, because the receiver of the action can be thought of as the one acted upon by the causer. But the patient is more closely tied to the action than the receiver is, so if there is a conflict and both want to be the object, the patient wins and the receiver is marked as a benefactive. The verb prefix also shows that flexibility in the prefix trick. When it's allowed, it means the prefix agrees with the indirect object instead of any direct object, but it's tricky because it also means the indirect object must be elided. It only ever agrees with an unstated word. That's why you can't say*qanob* or *SoH qanob* or even *SoHvaD qanob.* But you /can/ say *taj qanob* because it meets the requirements of the prefix trick. So the object argument of a Klingon verb is not necessarily always a direct object, but it can only represent an indirect object under certain circumstances. It's not purely optional.
I still argue that it would be just as accurate to say {tlhIngan Hol’e’ tera’nganpu’ vIghojmoH}, but that’s my original construction, never backed by canon, so it cannot be relied on as correct. It merely fails to break any rules we have had explained to us, and its meaning is obvious.
It does not break any rules, but its meaning is only obvious if you already know what it's supposed to mean. I could argue that I could just as easily say *tlhIngan Holmo' tera'ngan vIghojmoH*/I teach the Terran because of the Klingon language,/ and /obviously/ I'm saying that because I'm talking about teaching and a cause, that cause is what causes me to teach the Terran, so I must be teaching that language. I could argue that *tlhIngan HolvaD tera'ngan vIghojmoH* is what we should say because by teaching the Terran Klingon, the Klingon language receives a benefit, so /obviously/ I must be teaching Klingon. But none of these, including yours, actually express the idea I want to get across; they just skirt around the idea and hope you'll make the connection. You could take this to another extreme: *qoSDaj'e' vaS'a''e' tlhIngan Hol'e' tera'ngan'e' jIghojmoH*/As for his birthday, as for the Great Hall, as for the Klingon language, as for the Terran, I teach. /Well, /obviously/ it means I'm teaching the Terran the Klingon language in the Great Hall on his birthday. You've got a day, a place, a person, a language, and teaching. What else could it possibly mean? Just sticking an *-'e'* on a noun doesn't /really/ tell you what its function is in the sentence. Yes, it's the topic, but how does it interact with all the of the other entities in the sentence? It doesn't say. "This sentence is about X" begs the question "So what did X do?" Saying "X'e' N1 V N2" tells you all about what N1 and N2 did, but nothing about what X did.
You can also probably argue that to a Klingon linguist, other Type 5 marked nouns are special types of objects of the verb. If you don’t have any Type 5 marking on a noun before a verb, it’s not a direct object. It’s just an object. Klingon doesn’t have a suffix for direct object because it doesn’t really have the category of “direct object”. It’s just the leftover kind of object of the verb. If it is an object and it CAN’T take a Type 5 suffix, then a human-language linguist would call it a direct object, but a Klingon linguist would just call it an object and be done with it.
Nooooooooooo, nonononono. Those aren't objects. Those are nouns in roles other than object or subject. Object is a role. Subject is a role. Those other nouns are in roles like "locative," "benefactive," and "cause." Instead of being identified by their position in the sentence, they're identified by their endings. I'm sorry we don't have a nice, neat term for "noun role besides object or subject," but that's what they are. I tend to call them "syntactic nouns" or "syntactic noun phrases," since they're nouns or noun phrases marked by "syntactic markers," but this isn't a very good name.
Objects marked with Type 5 noun suffixes (except {-‘e’}, which is always special) are required to precede the verb, just like what human linguists call direct objects,
No, "any noun in the sentence indicating something other than subject or object comes first, before the object noun."
though the prefix on the verb exclusively refers to generic objects lacking a Type 5 suffix, whether those objects are stated or implied (witness the Prefix Trick). The prefix trick takes what we would call the indirect object, and because it is absent and by necessity has no suffix, points to it as an object, which it is. This is an alien justification for an accidental similarity to the English in “I gave you the pie.” {chab qanob.} He’s not mimicking English. He has a REASON for saying it that way. English doesn’t have a reason. It just does it because it can, in its arbitrary way.
I think it's quite clear that the prefix trick was a retroactive explanation for too-close translations. He translated things like /I give you the pie/ as *chab qanob* because he read "I give you" and found the /I+you(sing)/ prefix, not considering that in English it is an indirect object. When asked about it, he came up with an explanation that mirrors what English does and normalizes his previous errors. It was well done, but I'm sure he didn't think this is what was happening from the start.
As an extension of this, stative verbs (with “be” in the definition, which can be used adjectivally) technically can take objects, but only if they have a Type 5 noun suffix. They can’t take generic objects. You need a suffix to explain the relationship between stative verbs and their objects, as locatives, topics, or beneficiaries, etc. Those qualified objects still have to precede the verb, just like all Klingon objects.
But quality verbs (not "stative verbs," which would include verbs like *Qong*/sleep,/ which describes the state of being asleep) /can/ have objects... when they have *-moH* on them.
This can provide part of the explanation for the weirdness of certain verbs with {-Daq} absent from their objects or why {ghoS} can even be vague in terms of whether the object should have a {-Daq} or a {-vo’}.
It's not vague. It's explained clearly in TKD: certain verbs include a locative sense in their meanings, so their objects already refer to places. Putting the "place" suffix *-Daq* on one of these words wouldn't change its meaning in the sentence at all, so you can do it, and the only cost is redundancy. You can't say, for instance, *tajDaq vInob* because *nob* does not have a place as its object, so you /are/ changing the meaning of the sentence by adding that *-Daq,* and that meaning is inappropriate. The object of *nob* is the thing given, not the location or destination of the action, so using a location as its object is not allowed.
The sentence is {juH vIghoS} whether I’m going to or from home because I’m moving along the “home path”, regardless of which direction I’m traveling. If it’s important that I let you know that I’m going FROM home as opposed to toward it, I optionally can say {juHvo’ jIghoS}, but I’m not WRONG if I just say {juH vIghoS}. I’m just being a little vague, focusing on the route I’m traveling instead of the destination. Note that I can’t say {juHDaq jIghoS} unless I am within the boundaries of my home, so there is no way that I can unambiguously tell you that I am going TOWARD my home. It’s what I’m more commonly saying to you, but it’s never completely explicit.
*juHDaq vIghoS*/I am proceeding toward my home./ This is unambiguous, disregarding interpretations of an elided pronoun like *juHDaq ghaH vIghoS*.
The prefix, oddly, doesn’t indicate an object for qualified (suffixed) objects. It just indicates the link between the verb and its vaguely remainder type of object that doesn’t have a suffix, which isn’t a direct object because, hey, Klingons are ALIEN and their language is ALIEN.
Or you can take that as evidence that nouns marked as something other than object or subject simply aren't objects or subjects.
Get used to it.
Indeed. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name