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. I'll grant that "prefix trick with stative verbs" is the least likely to be acceptable out of my three examples.
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*? 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. (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.) 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.