I think the real issue here is that most verbs take some kind of object, and on a case-by-case basis, in order to fully understand each verb, you have to understand what kind of object it takes. While I like the idea of the term “locative verb”, I think that it might tempt people to oversimplify the relationship between verbs and objects by classifying one type of verb that uses a location for an object as different from all other verbs that use something other than a location as an object. So, I think “locative verb” is a good idea to open one’s mind to the sometimes complex and arbitrary relationship between a verb and its objects, but I’m not sure it classifies enough verbs into one group to fully function as a useful classifier. I also think that it might group together verbs that don’t really work exactly the same way, and we might become tempted to think that they do when they don’t. You have wisely stated in the past that I have oversimplified the concept of the relationship between Klingon verbs and objects, putting unjustified weight on the term “direct object”. At the time, I honestly thought you were wrong, but Okrand has proven you correct as he explained how the verb suffix {-moH} works. I know I’m still confused about this, and my stubbornness doesn’t help, but clearly, you understood objects better than I did for many years, in terms of the flexibility of the relationship between a verb and its potential objects. There are a wider class of objects than I was believing to be the case, and the term “direct object” doesn’t really work in Klingon. Okrand evaded the term, himself, and I never understood that. I’m really only beginning to understand it, after all these years, and mostly, I admit, I just understand that I misunderstand. I don’t pretend to know the details. With {ghoS} as a good example, the verb means to move along a path. The glosses suggest this, but they don’t really explain it very well. The direct object is a noun that indicates the path you are on. It can be the destination, or the point of origin, or the path itself if the path has a name, or it can be some other noun the path passes through. If there is an actual locative {-Daq} on a noun, it tends to not indicate the path, but the location of the subject as it moves along the path, like saying, “I’m driving to California in my car.” Translated into Klingon, the car would get the {-Daq} suffix because that’s your location, while you travel along a California path. California doesn’t get a {-Daq}. In the examples here, mountains apparently function as objects for the verb {Sal}. So, you can ascend a mountain. You don’t need {-Daq}. You are not ascending to the mountain. You are ascending the mountain. Likely, if mountain had {-Daq} on it, it would be not the object of the verb, but instead simply a location where the ascending is happening. This is not the same thing as having the mountain be the object of “ascend”. It’s not the case that a locative suffix can optionally be used on the object of the verb. It’s that a noun with a locative feature is the direct object of the verb. Location, for these verbs, is a semantic reference, not a syntactic one. The location of the object is what we are using the object for, but there is no grammatical indicator that this noun is a location. Any grammatical locative gives a grammatical reference to the location of the action of the verb. It does not function as an object of the verb. You are right about this, and the person who suggested that {-Daq} is optional didn’t understand how this works. This is similar to the English difference between “The Moon orbits the Earth,” vs. “The Moon goes around the Earth.” In the former, the Earth is the object of “orbit”, but in the latter, the Earth is part of a prepositional phrase telling where the going happens. The Earth is not the object of “go”. My frustration with the glossed definitions in TKD is that it rarely gives us enough information to fully understand the verbs because it is only in the use of the verbs in canon that we get to witness the specifics of the relationship between a verb and its potential objects, and we get so few canon examples that we have to use most verbs without really knowing how they work with authority. We had to ask Okrand to find out if {vIH} took an object. It doesn’t. {vIHmoH} takes an object. In English, you can move (yourself) or you can cause something else to move, and use the same verb in both cases. I moved out of my wife’s way. I moved the box out of my wife’s way. In Klingon {jIvIH}, but {‘etlh vIvIHmoH}. The gloss in the dictionary doesn’t really tell you that. So, we hobble along as best we can with the limited details, and we pay attention to canon to fill in what he otherwise doesn’t tell us. He has kept things vague so that he can, himself, when he needs to, use existing vocabulary to say things he wasn’t necessarily expecting to have to say when he wrote the dictionary entry. I understand that. Still, it leaves us in a more awkward place than if he had been more specific. As years pass, we learn more and more, and we get better at this. There are fewer episodes of us having to go back and realize that we’d been wrong when we made assumptions earlier. charghwI’ ‘utlh

On Feb 11, 2019, at 2:08 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

On 2/11/2019 1:55 PM, Steven Boozer wrote:

...

Known examples of {Sal} “ascend” and {ghIr} “descend”, all from the paq’batlh:

SaqSub'e' muSHa'bogh pawmeH leng qeylIS, HuDmey Sal ghIq ghIr And Kahless traveled to his beloved Saq'sub, over the mountains (PB)

QIStaq 'emDaq jenchoH jul, yor DungDaq Salta'DI' tagh HarghchuqmeH poH The sun rises high behind the Kri'stak, when it rises over its top, it is time to do battle. (PB)

HuDmeyvo' ghIr chaH Over the hills, they came. (PB)

From these three examples – all referring to mountains or hills - it appears that the locative suffix is optional.

Not optional. In the first example, the object is the thing climbed, not the destination. In the second and third, the verbs in question do not have any object, but take the destination or origin as a non-object syntactic noun. (I am assuming these are not examples of "redundant, but not out-and-out wrong" uses of syntactic suffixes.)

In no example is the destination the object of the verb, which is what would be required for the verb's meaning to "include locative notions."

-- SuStel http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

I agree with you that the term “verb of motion” has no more fundamental usefulness than “locative verb”. Both almost describe what is going on, but fail to clarify the point. To be honest, I don’t remember significance put on the term “verbs of motion”, though I’m sure I overused it. Certainly, there’s nothing in TKD that uses the term, and if I’ve been using it, it’s just something that came out in an attempt to convey some meaning, and thinking on it now, I think whatever it conveyed is incomplete. I don’t remember intending to create an intentional classification. If I did, I was foolish to think I accomplished much. [Pause. Try to remember decades ago.] Yep. I overused it and I was foolish to do so. Certainly, the difficult part of understanding {ghoS} and its ilk has more to do with understanding what kind of objects it takes, since it is unlike English to have a verb that has this sense of intentionality wrapped up in it. I suspect that it has a similar character to the difference between {-pu’} and {-ta’}. {jaH} means “go” with no reference to the direction or manner or intent of the going, while {ghoS} implies following a specific course or path. You plan {ghoS} and as you {ghoS} you are executing the plan. The plan is revealed by the verb's object, which is a noun associated with the path or course. You are correct that it’s the location of the object that is significant. The weird part is that we have this grammatical marker for location, {-Daq} and we don’t use it on the object of a verb. So, the suffix {-Daq} has a weird relationship with this particular group of verbs. It’s one of the beautifully strange features of Klingon. You can’t casually approach these verbs without thinking it through and recognizing that something different is happening here. This ain’t English, or French, or Finnish, or Mandarin. This is alien. We have a verb {ghoS} for moving along a path, {vegh} for moving through a doorway/tunnel/opening, and probably a few others that I’m too rusty to bring to mind. The closest English equivalent is “orbit”, since the direct object of “orbit” has a prepositional relationship to the subject and verb. When you orbit something, you go around it. You don’t go it. While you can say you orbit around it, the preposition “around” is redundant and superfluous. In Klingon, it’s more extreme than that. {-Daq} is not merely optional. It changes the meaning. The object of {ghoS} is the path, but a grammatically marked locative is more locally where the subject happens to be while following a path that is not marked by the locative, like sailing along a river in a boat. The locative is the boat. The object is the river. I can imagine a Klingon learning the English verb “peel”, and he’s shown how to peel a banana and an orange, and then he picks up a pistachio and starts talking about peeling pistachios, and people have to explain that you don’t peel a pistachio. You can peel off a band-aid. You can peel off a helmet. You can peel off a sweater. You can peel off body armor. But you can’t peel a pistachio. Basically, you don’t understand a verb until you know what works as its object and what doesn’t. That’s the problem with TKD. It doesn’t typically tell us a lot about what does or does not work as an object for the verbs. We make the best guesses we can, and then maybe someday Okrand gives us canon that corrects whatever misunderstandings we get from failed guesses. charghwI’ ‘utlh

On Feb 11, 2019, at 4:46 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

On 2/11/2019 4:36 PM, Will Martin wrote:

...

I think the real issue here is that most verbs take some kind of object, and on a case-by-case basis, in order to fully understand each verb, you have to understand what kind of object it takes. While I like the idea of the term “locative verb”, I think that it might tempt people to oversimplify the relationship between verbs and objects by classifying one type of verb that uses a location for an object as different from all other verbs that use something other than a location as an object. I'm not going to pretend that I have carefully read your entire email. Instead, I'll respond to this first bit. I'm not declaring a new world order in which all worship the locative/non-locative divide. I'm just saying that locative verb is more accurate than verb of motion.

We started saying verb of motion when your interview with Okrand was published and we were dazzled by the implications. The thing is, we didn't notice that this concept had been with us all along, in that passage of TKD that I quoted before. The interview focused on verbs that had to do with motion, and indeed these will probably be the majority of such verbs, and we started calling them verbs of motion. Okrand didn't use the phrase, we did. Okrand didn't link this type of verb to motion, we did.

Then we start confusing ourselves, trying to figure out which verbs involve motion, when what's really going on is that we need to look for verbs that involve location. That's what TKD tells us. It doesn't use the term locative verb any more than Okrand used the term verb of motion, but it's a nicely descriptive term.

That's all. You're speaking in absolutes; I'm just acknowledging a useful term.

...

So, I think “locative verb” is a good idea to open one’s mind to the sometimes complex and arbitrary relationship between a verb and its objects, but I’m not sure it classifies enough verbs into one group to fully function as a useful classifier. I also think that it might group together verbs that don’t really work exactly the same way, and we might become tempted to think that they do when they don’t. That's exactly what I think verb of motion does.

-- SuStel http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

In the interview, Okrand said that adding the {-Daq} WOULD change the meaning. His example was being in a boat on a river. {-Daq} applies to the boat. The object of {ghoS} is the river. I don’t remember {jaH} having an object. I’m sure you may be right about that. I simply don’t remember it. If you want to call these “locative verbs”, go for it. I don’t see a problem with that. I see it as neither better or worse than “verbs of motion”. Both descriptors are incomplete, but serve as a useful shorthand for a more complex concept. I’m sure that people using either term will be understood. charghwI’ ‘utlh

On Feb 12, 2019, at 8:52 AM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

On 2/12/2019 8:39 AM, Will Martin wrote:

...

Certainly, the difficult part of understanding {ghoS} and its ilk has more to do with understanding what kind of objects it takes, since it is unlike English to have a verb that has this sense of intentionality wrapped up in it. I suspect that it has a similar character to the difference between {-pu’} and {-ta’}. {jaH} means “go” with no reference to the direction or manner or intent of the going, while {ghoS} implies following a specific course or path. You plan {ghoS} and as you {ghoS} you are executing the plan. I really have no idea what you're talking about here. Aside from being a "locative verb," a verb whose object includes a locative concept, there is nothing special about ghoS. It refers to following a course or path. The course or path is its object. That's it. There's nothing about intentionality there. If you're tied to an out-of-control wheelchair rolling downhill down a road, you still ghoS that road.

As for jaH: it does make reference to the direction of the going. jaH is also one of these verbs that includes a locative concept, only instead of the course, the object is a locative indicating the destination. We learned that jaH is a "locative verb" in your interview with Okrand, a fact we could not glean from its TKD definition.

The defining characteristic of "locative verbs" is that their objects are locatives without being marked as locatives. That's why if you do add the locative suffix, you don't change the meaning. It's redundant.

-- SuStel http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

On 2/12/2019 10:05 AM, Jeffrey Clark wrote:

IIRC, {bIQtIq(-Daq) vIghoS} would be something like “I follow the river”, whereas {bIQtIqDaq jIghoS} is “I come to the river”. I’m still fuzzy on the interpretation of the distinction, but I do remember there being a distinction.

*bIQtIqDaq jIghoS* would mean /At the river, I go/. Maybe you're standing by the river, then you walk along some path near it. Or you walk in circles next to it. Whatever the path being followed when you *ghoS,* it's not the river. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name

On 2/12/2019 11:37 AM, Will Martin wrote:

Anyway, I do believe you are right and I had misremembered {bIQtIqDaq vIghoS}. Thanks for pointing that out. So, depending on the prefix, the {-Daq} is optional. I was wrong about that. I personally think that {bIQtIq vIghoS} is stylistically preferable to {bIQtIqDaq vIghoS}, since it is less ambiguous, given that there could be some implied course that doesn’t involve the river if you include {-Daq}, but that’s just a personal opinion carrying no more weight than anyone else’s opinion.

It's not exactly optional. There is a difference: *bIQtIqDaq vIghoS* is "somewhat redundant, but not out-and-out wrong." So your choices are to not use the *-Daq* or to use the *-Daq* and be somewhat redundant. And it's not really dependent on the prefix. It's just that the prefix makes it clear whether you're talking about an object or a noun that comes before the object-verb-subject structure. In TKD the difference is shown without changing any prefix: *Duj ghoStaH*/It is approaching the ship/ versus *DujDaq ghoStaH*/It is approaching toward the ship./ Using an example without an illustrative prefix is just harder to follow. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name

Well said. I’m guessing we disagree less than you think we do. Likely, it would help anyone interested in understanding this that the object of these unusual verbs is a noun whose location is its important feature. This is, as you like to point out, a semantic issue, not a grammatical one. We understand that the object of {ghoS} and its ilk is a location. We don’t have to mark it grammatically with {-Daq}, and if we do mark it with {-Daq}, we potentially give the noun a role that is not the object of the verb. It’s not horribly wrong if we mark the object of the verb with {-Daq} but it opens an unnecessary door to misunderstanding. The Moon orbits the Earth in Space. The Moon orbits in Space. The Moon doesn’t orbit Space. charghwI’ ‘utlh

On Feb 12, 2019, at 10:06 AM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

On 2/12/2019 9:37 AM, Will Martin wrote:

...

In the interview, Okrand said that adding the {-Daq} WOULD change the meaning. His example was being in a boat on a river. {-Daq} applies to the boat. The object of {ghoS} is the river. No, he said that adding -Daq to the object would not change the meaning, only make the sentence redundant. I'm not talking about adding a locative with -Daq on it before the object.

Duj vIjaH I go to the ship.

DujDaq vIjaH I go to the ship (redundant).

DujDaq jIjaH While I'm on the ship, I go somewhere (on the ship).

In the first two, Duj(Daq) is the object. In the last one, it is not. What Okrand was saying is that when you've got a verb that includes a locative notion, the object of that verb is the locative, and any locative added before the object cannot duplicate the meaning of the object.

So with Duj vIjaH, the object Duj indicates the destination ("to" the ship.) If I say DujDaq jIjaH, the DujDaq is a locative that cannot mean to the ship, because that meaning is inherent in the verb's object, but it can mean any of the other possible meanings of -Daq: on the ship, in the ship, by the ship, at the ship. It just can't mean to the ship.

...

I don’t remember {jaH} having an object. I’m sure you may be right about that. I simply don’t remember it. It was revealed to be so in your interview. bIQtIqDaq vIjaH. He also revealed that leng can take a destination as its object.

...

If you want to call these “locative verbs”, go for it. I don’t see a problem with that. I see it as neither better or worse than “verbs of motion”. Both descriptors are incomplete, "Locative verbs" is not incomplete. It is simply a shorter version of the phrase Okrand himself used in TKD: "verbs whose meanings include locative notions." I put it in scare quotes to note that it is not a term used by Okrand.

"Verbs of motion," on the other hand, is incomplete and misleading, however, because it does not include verbs whose meanings include locative notions that aren't related to motion, and because it does include verbs whose meanings include motion but do not include locative notions (like Sal).

-- SuStel http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

I still don’t think we disagree as much as you’d like to believe. I see that my primary function in your life is to give you someone to correct at all opportunities, and I’m okay with that, though I’m slightly disinclined to not respond when I’m being corrected for something I don’t have wrong. Words represent everything we convey in language. The vocabulary and the grammar compliment each other toward the common goal of conveying meaning. The abstract separation of language into syntax and semantics helps us better understand the mechanisms of conveying meaning. “I swim in a river.” The syntax (the grammar) implies that the river is a location where the swimming happens. Grammatically, it’s a “locative”. Meanwhile, if I say, “I swim in a kiddy pool,” or “I swim in an ocean” the difference in meaning in most contexts has less to do with the location than it does all the sensory associations of “river”, “kiddy pool”, and “ocean”. Swimming in a river is going to have bigger waves than the kiddy pool and smaller ones than the ocean. If it’s below the fall line, the wet stuff will be salty and rise and fall with the tides. Above the fall line, it will be fresh water and the current will always flow toward the ocean (or more accurately, toward the falls, which are between here and the ocean). The wet stuff will not be chlorinated or artificially temperature controlled, or indoors. So, syntactically, “in a river” is a location, but semantically, in most contexts, it has more to do with the sensations one has at a river. Small waves. Current. Fish. Maybe stinging nettles. Sand or mud along the shore line. The actual location of the river may or may not be important, despite the grammatical marker (preposition). “I follow the river.” Here, the river is the direct object. There is no syntactical marker or grammatical indicator that the location of the river is significant. Meanwhile, the nature of the verb “follow” suggests that the location and shape of the river is the important thing for the verb “follow”. It has very little to do with all that wet stuff. It’s a geographical feature; the stuff of maps. Maps are all about location. The grammatical, syntactic function of the river is to be a direct object; a thing with a bunch of features and qualities bundled up with it. Working with the verb “follow”, its most important feature is its location, even though there’s no preposition giving it a syntactic marker as a locative. I’m not wrong in suggesting that the semantic needs for a locative of the verb {ghoS} are fed by its direct object, even as it lacks the syntactic marker {-Daq}. In {bIQtIq vIghoS}, there is no grammatical indicator that the river is a path-like location. That’s all part of the meaning of {bIQtIq}. It’s a very specific subset of all the meanings associated with {bIQtIq}. The verb {ghoS} needs this locative meaning to be fulfilled by its object. The semantic features of {ghoS} create this focus on this limited subset of a greater set of meanings {bIQtIq} can carry, and a different verb would similarly focus on some other subset of features associated with {bIQtIq}. This is why we need to understand the specific relationship between any verb and its appropriate objects in order to fully understand the verb. This is why we don’t peel pistachios, even though it’s more nicely alliterative than shelling them. Thank you for giving me another thing to think about more deeply than I would have without your contribution. charghwI’ ‘utlh

On Feb 12, 2019, at 12:04 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

On 2/12/2019 11:47 AM, Will Martin wrote:

...

I’m guessing we disagree less than you think we do. Likely, it would help anyone interested in understanding this that the object of these unusual verbs is a noun whose location is its important feature. This is, as you like to point out, a semantic issue, not a grammatical one. I don't think a semantic versus syntax argument is really the issue here.

...

We understand that the object of {ghoS} and its ilk is a location. We don’t have to mark it grammatically with {-Daq}, and if we do mark it with {-Daq}, we potentially give the noun a role that is not the object of the verb. Not quite. We don't have to mark it grammatically with -Daq, and if we do mark it with -Daq we potentially confuse the reader or listener as to whether we're talking about an object or a noun in the pre-object position.

If I say DujDaq ghoStaH, I know whether I mean that the subject is approaching the ship or on the ship and approaching, but the meaning is ambiguous to anyone else. The role of DujDaq doesn't change; it's just ambiguous.

Such ambiguities happen all the time, though, and shouldn't cause us worry. Context will make the correct meaning clear. And often probability will play a role. It's possible to interpret DujDaq vIghoStaH as I am on the ship, approaching it (an elided 'oH it as object), but it's unlikely I'm going to elide the object in this way if the chance of misunderstanding is high. DujDaq 'oH vIghoStaH.

-- SuStel http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

qatlho’. Wagnerian? Thank you for making your point with clarity and humor. You made me laugh at myself. It felt good, and perhaps it will help me participate toward a better common good. charghwI’ ‘utlh

On Feb 12, 2019, at 1:56 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

On 2/12/2019 1:44 PM, Will Martin wrote:

...

I see that my primary function in your life is to give you someone to correct at all opportunities, and I’m okay with that, though I’m slightly disinclined to not respond when I’m being corrected for something I don’t have wrong. Why can't you just not include the drama in every single sentence? I'd happily debate grammar with you until the cows come home, and with not a moment's irritation, if only your Wagnerian text were less so. The drama is a distraction. The weighing of evidence, the innovations, the construction of elegant meaning, the epiphanies: those are the important things.

-- SuStel http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org