[862] in tlhIngan-Hol
Transitivity
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Fri May 14 01:31:38 1993
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
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Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: (Mark E. Shoulson) <shoulson@ctr.columbia.edu>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Thu, 13 May 93 13:26:36 -0400
I didn't get the idea that Krankor is proposing that Klingon has no
distinction between transitives and intransitives; that wouldn't make much
sense given the -moH suffix. What I understood was that he claims that the
line between direct and indirect objects is blurry. Many languages,
including ones Ken refers to, have the same blurring. Consider English "I
asked him", where "him" is the direct object. But "I asked him a question"
has "question" as the direct object and "him" as the indirect object. And
even Esperanto, which distinguishes its objects carefully, has precisely
the same construction: "mi demandis lin" vs. "mi demandis demandon al li".
In fact, many uses of the accusative in Esperanto may be rephrased by using
a preposition (perhaps technically all such uses, but some are never seen
in practice). So it would not be at all surprising if "qatlhIj" were a
synonymn for "SohvaD jItlhIj"; it would be a very natural use of the
language. The same might even hold true for "multiple objects", like "they
call the wind 'Mariah'" might be {"Mariah" SuS lupong}, with just two noun
phrases in the "object" position (unflagged adverbial noun-phrases are
already attested, e.g. "vagh rep bImejnIS" from the tape: checkout time is
0500h). To my ear, it would sound better if "Mariah" got flagged with
-'e', but I don't know why.
~mark
