I fully acknowledge that you may be right. In the past, I argued that the direct object of {jatlh} has to be a language or utterance, while the direct object of {ja’} has to be the person receiving the utterance. I honestly believe this was Okrand’s original intent, since {ja’chuq} can only have persons doing the reciprocal exchange of speech, and we haven’t seen {*jatlhchuq} anywhere in canon or in the dictionary, and the glosses heavily suggest as much, but he later got mushy about this, likely screwed up creating canon, and alakazam, you can {jatlh} a person and you can {ja’} a language or utterance, and I think the language is worse for it. We don’t have a vocabulary so large that the relationship between verbs and their peculiar direct objects should be glommed together like this. Similarly, we clearly have a word {jaH} which has as its object the destination, and we have {ghoS} which has the path/road/course as its direct object. The whole reason we need two different verbs for this is their relationship with their special direct object. We also have the general rule that a noun with {-Daq} in all of the most common instances gives the location where the action of the verb occurs. A very small number of verbs have locations or paths as their direct object, and these special verbs deserve special attention and clarity. So, since people get confused about the meaning of [x]Daq because of [x]-vo’, and the gloss includes “to”, we muddy things up by saying, “Don’t worry your pointy little head about this. Just let it all glom together. It can be the location of the action OR the destination of the action with {ghoS} because it’s easier to declare that than it is to remember this every time he writes canon, and gee, he might mess up, so let’s just keep it all messy. Natural languages are all messy, so keeping this messy is a good thing, right? Meanwhile, what you write will be clearer and cleaner if you use {jaH} for destinations and {ghoS} for course/path/road. Be as vague and messy as you like. Someone should point out obviously better use of specific verbs. That really is the beginning and end of why I bother commenting on this. I’m not talking about what is right and what is wrong. I’m talking about what is better and clearer, and what is worse and messier. It’s not a law. It’s just an opinion, since my strange interest in this strange language is in having it prove that it’s mature enough to express things clearly, which is clearly a minority interest here. Perhaps a minority of one. I’d like to think it’s not a hobby language that exists primarily to be poked and stretched, rather than actually used to express anything, but it’s probably a foolish thought. pItlh charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)

On Aug 3, 2023, at 9:08 AM, SuStel via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org> wrote:

On 8/3/2023 7:40 AM, luis.chaparro--- via tlhIngan-Hol wrote:

...

...

{vengDaq taw vIghoS} means “I’m traveling along a road in the city.” It does not mean “I’m traveling along a road toward the city.” “Toward the city” is a direction, not a location. If you want to indicate that you are going toward the city, you are using the wrong verb. {taw vIghoS. veng vIjaH}. I'm sorry but I don't think I'm getting the point here. I thought *-Daq* expresses a location or a destination depending on context. De'vID and SuStel agreed, if I've understood them well, that the sentence *vengDaq taw vIghoS* can be translated *I go along the road in the city* (*vengDaq* expressing a location where something happens) or *I go along the road toward the city* (*vengDaq* expressing a destination where I'm moving to). SuStel also interpreted *ghe'tor lojmIt'a'Daq 'Iw bIQtIq ghoS* as *He goes along the River of Blood toward the great gates of Gre'thor*.

Am I missing something? I think charghwI' is being unnecessarily restrictive on the meaning of a non-object noun with -Daq before the verb ghoS. He's assuming it never means a destination, only the place where the going happens. I argue that this is the case of jaH, where the object of the verb is the destination, so any other locative non-object noun in the sentence cannot also be the destination, but it is not the case with ghoS, where the object is the course followed, not necessarily the destination, so the role of destination remains open to non-object -Daq nouns.

-- 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’, jupwI’. jIyaj. chaq notlhchoH jabbI’IDghomvam, ‘ach chaq jInotlhchoH, je. jIqanchoHbej. ‘utlh jIH.qaStaHvIS wejmaH loS ben, DuSaQ’a’vaD jIvumlI'. pItlh. be’nal wej puqpu’ nen je vIghaj. cha' puqnI’be’ vIghaj, ‘ach maSuchchuq wa’ neH jIH je. pe’ru' Dab latlh. wej Hol jatlh pe’ru'nganvam, ‘ach HolmeywIj jatlhbe’. maw’ SoSDaj. ghaHvo’ narghta’ puqloDwI’. naDev muqaghqa’mo’ be’nalwI’ puqnI’be’ je, Qatlh QInvam vItameH Qu’. yajbe’ chaH. tlhIngan Hol yajbe’ ‘ej tlhIngan Hol vIjatlhmeH meqwIj yajbe’. poHwIj vI’anmoH ‘e’ luHar. chaq qar. *social media* vIlo’Qo’. jInoy vIneHbe’. nuq vISop? qatlh net SIv? jIram. ram jajwIj. ram Qu’meywIj. vay’ vIQubchugh, Hoch vIbon vIneHbe’. jImobDI’, jIbaw’. naDev rut mujangmoH QIn. rut tlhIngan Hol vIlo’taHvIS mujangmeH poH vIHutlh, vaj pIj DIvI’ Hol vIlo’. vIyajlu’chu’ vIneH ‘ej jIyajlu’chu’meH, roD DIvI’ Hol vIwIj. DIvI’ Hol vIlo’ ‘ej vIqaghlu'chugh, qay’be’. tlhIngan Hol vIlo’chugh ‘ej vIqaghlu’chugh, jImoghbej. jIQuch vIneH. roD jIQuch. jImoghchughlI’, jIQuchbe’lI’. Etiquette suggests I should translate this into English for those less skilled with the language, but when I was the Beginners’ Grammarian on this list, HoD Qanqor wrote things in Klingon without translation, and it was my task to translate it for the beginners. The effort, without the fallback of skipping the Klingon and just reading the English significantly improved my skill with the language. In that spirit, I’m not translating this message. It’s not an accidental omission. I’m trusting my skill at writing and ghunchu’wI’’s skill at reading to convey what I want to express. pItlh charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)

On Aug 3, 2023, at 1:40 PM, Alan Anderson via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org> wrote:

On Aug 3, 2023, at 12:12 PM, Will Martin via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org> wrote:

...

…since my strange interest in this strange language is in having it prove that it’s mature enough to express things clearly, which is clearly a minority interest here. Perhaps a minority of one.

I’d like to think it’s not a hobby language that exists primarily to be poked and stretched, rather than actually used to express anything, but it’s probably a foolish thought.

bImob'eghmoHlaw'pu'. ghomuvqa'! yIghImHa'egh! Hoch wIrIchbej. malaw'qu'. 'uQ wISopmeH matay'DI', tlhoy malaw'. ja' luneHchugh HochHom, quqnIS ja'chuqghachmey Sar.

loQ notlhchoH jabbI'IDghomvam. DaH latlh mIw maSlu': Discord. nen Holvam, pa' 'e' DatIvlaH.

qep'a' DajaHqa'laHjaj. DuHbe'chugh, Discord yInaw'. (SoHvaD DuHchugh qep'a' leng, Discord yInaw' je.)

You’ve been away from the rest of us for far too long, friend. Email in general, and the tlhingan-hol list in particular, is becoming much less of a focus for the Klingon community. We’re gathered on Discord now, with a smaller secondary congregation on Facebook. There are more of us who *are* using this language to “express anything” now than can comfortably go out to dinner together. We barely fit at the same table for {ghem} last week!

I hope you can find a way to rejoin us in person at next year’s qep'a', but if you really want to experience the language’s maturity you need to join us on Discord.

https://www.kli.org/discord will give you an invitation to the KLI’s Discord server.

-- ghunchu'wI'

_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

On 8/3/2023 12:02 PM, Will Martin via tlhIngan-Hol wrote:

I fully acknowledge that you may be right.

In the past, I argued that the direct object of {jatlh} has to be a language or utterance, while the direct object of {ja’} has to be the person receiving the utterance. I honestly believe this was Okrand’s original intent, since {ja’chuq} can only have persons doing the reciprocal exchange of speech, and we haven’t seen {*jatlhchuq} anywhere in canon or in the dictionary, and the glosses heavily suggest as much, but he later got mushy about this, likely screwed up creating canon, and alakazam, you can {jatlh} a person and you can {ja’} a language or utterance, and I think the language is worse for it. We don’t have a vocabulary so large that the relationship between verbs and their peculiar direct objects should be glommed together like this.

But your assumption rests on your unwavering belief that the noun argument that goes before the verb is the "direct object" instead of the "object." We have lots of evidence now that shows that that noun position doesn't make a sharp distinction between direct and indirect objects. We know that the verb prefix can agree with an indirect object instead of a direct object, even if there is no explicit noun present to agree with. When you see *qaja'* and don't know any other examples of how *ja'* works, you can't tell just from the syntax whether the *qa-* is agree with a direct or indirect object. Only when you consider what the word *ja'* means can you start to piece together what the verb prefix is pointing at, and that's not a syntactic argument. Furthermore, you're assuming that *-chuq* involves treating the subject as its own object, but in fact TKD says no such thing. All that's required is that the subject be plural and that the verb prefix agree with "no object." Seeing the word *ja'chuq* doesn't imply anything about the proper object of *ja',* because it /has/ no object. It only has a plural subject. We don't see *jatlhchuq* in canon not because it is syntactically illegal, but because it makes no semantic sense. You don't say *jatlhchuq* for the same reason you don't say *quS HoH* /kill a chair/ — because the concept makes no sense, not because it's syntactically disallowed. If we found a situation where *jatlhchuq* made sense — maybe a nightmarish Picassoesque setting where the person you're speaking to comes out of your mouth when you speak to them — then you could say it.

Similarly, we clearly have a word {jaH} which has as its object the destination, and we have {ghoS} which has the path/road/course as its direct object. The whole reason we need two different verbs for this is their relationship with their special direct object.

We got those words with TKD, and they were anything but clear. We had to wait until your interview with Okrand in HolQeD before we learned that *jaH* took the destination of going as its object, and that any other non-object locative on *jaH* would be interpreted as a not-destination. I don't think the *jaH/ghoS* distinction was at all clear to Okrand until then. We got contradictory examples: *jolpa' yIjaH* (the destination is the object; is it clipped?); *vaS'a'Daq majaHlaH'a'*//(the destination is not the object, clearly demonstrated by the verb prefix). I think the difference between *jaH* and *ghoS* in Okrand's mind was that *ghoS* was the verb you used for ships setting courses, while *jaH* was the verb you used for more general /go/ing, and it had nothing to do with distinguishing courses and destinations as objects. Most of the vocabulary in TKD revolves around either Star Trek situations involving Klingons, phrases that show up in tourist language books, or objects that Okrand could look around the room and notice. I think he was confronted by KLI members wanting the seeming contradictory canon explained, and he found an explanation that fit almost everything that he had written up to that point.

We also have the general rule that a noun with {-Daq} in all of the most common instances gives the location where the action of the verb occurs. A very small number of verbs have locations or paths as their direct object, and these special verbs deserve special attention and clarity.

But that's not how they split. *-Daq* is /in, at, by, to, toward./ How it's understood depends on context and the verb. In this sense, there are exactly two types of verbs: verbs that include inherent locative senses, and verbs that don't. Verbs that include inherent locative senses are those that can take a locative object: *jolpa'(Daq) jaH; nImbuS wej(Daq) ghoS.* Verbs that don't include inherent locative senses can still use nouns with *-Daq* that include destinations: *vaS'a'Daq mayIt.* Because *-Daq* can mean all of /in, at, by, to, toward,/ *vaS'a'Daq mayIt* is ambiguous as to whether the Great Hall is your destination or the site of your walking. More context is needed. But it is not the case that *vaS'a'Daq mayIt* can only mean /We walk IN the Great Hall./

So, since people get confused about the meaning of [x]Daq because of [x]-vo’, and the gloss includes “to”, we muddy things up by saying, “Don’t worry your pointy little head about this. Just let it all glom together. It can be the location of the action OR the destination of the action with {ghoS} because it’s easier to declare that than it is to remember this every time he writes canon, and gee, he might mess up, so let’s just keep it all messy. Natural languages are all messy, so keeping this messy is a good thing, right?

But that's not what we're saying, and it's not true. *-Daq* /does/ include locations of action AND destination all in one "locative" package. A verb with an inherent locative sense might single out a particular meaning of that *-Daq:* *jolpa'Daq yIjaH* forces *jolpa'Daq* to mean /to the transport room,/ not /in the transport room/ or /by the transport room./ -- SuStel http://trimboli.name