[870] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: "movie"mey, etc. (was: RE: RESENT: Bounced Mail III)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Fri May 14 01:57:51 1993
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
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: Captain Krankor <krankor@codex.prds.cdx.mot.com>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Thu, 13 May 93 17:47:45 -0400
In response to Ken Beesley:
>1. I maintain that transitive vs. intransitive is an important and fundamenta
l
>distinction in Klingon.
I maintain that it is not.
>2. I am NOT arguing that it is always obvious from our present sketchy
>description which verbs are transitive and which are intransitive. In the
>"dictionary" itself, all we have is a bilingual wordlist with the crudest
>possible part-of-speech designations. This is not enough to tell us, in many
>cases, how each verb is correctly used. Such usage information, expressed in
>terms of transitivity distinctions, or case frames, or "valency," will be
>necessary in a more complete description. So when we learn that pub (V) means
>"boil," we do not presently know if it is the intransitive (The water is
>boiling) or the transitive (John boiled the water). However, if we cornered a
>Klingon and asked, I'd bet it could be easily identified as one or the other.
Perhaps, but that is purely speculative, and even if true, we have
no way to know.
>3. I am NOT arguing that the Klingon distinction between transitive and
>intransitive will mirror similar distinctions in English in all cases. Klingo
n
>will have its own usage, and the rules will be discovered only by asking
>informants. A classic example is yaS vImojpu' (officer I-it became), where,
>unlike English, moj is transitive and takes "officer" as an object.
I certainly agree that we could not use English as our guide as to
which would be "transitive" and "intransitive". And since, at
present, Klingon itself provides no data on that subject, the only
conclusion is that, at least given what we know at present, there is
no such distinction.
There is an important distinction here, though, which I think needs
to be emphasised, between what Ken is talking about and what most
others seem to mean when they refer to "intransitive" Klingon verbs.
The distinction is his point 3 above. The main reason I rail
against referring to Klingon verbs as "intransitive" is because in
pretty much every case that comes up, someone has just assumed that
it must be "intransitive" because the English verb is so. Even if
Klingon has transitive/intransitive distinctions, there is no reason
to assume it is just like English. In short, criticising someone's
Klingon because they used an object on a verb that in English would
be intransitive just doesn't cut it.
>4. Klingon has 4 classic morphological features which, I believe, have
>TRANSITIVE vs. INTRANSITIVE written all over them. These are a) the
>distinction between "no object" verbal prefixes and the subject-object verb
>prefixes, b) the productive causative suffix -moH, c) the impersonal-subject
>suffix -lu', and d) reflexives.
Well, let's see.
> Verbal prefixes: the "no object" prefixes jI-, bI-, ma-, Su-, and the
>third-person zero prefixes are used when the verb has no "object" or when the
>object is vague. The other prefixes agree or indicate both the subject (Okran
d
>seems to indicate that the subject is typically an "agent" in deep case or rol
e
>terms) and an "object." Given the caveats above about comparing English
>transitivity with Klingon transitivity, I believe that Klingon transitive verb
s
>can appear with either kind of prefix; but Klingon intransitives can appear
>only with the "no object" prefixes.
This is not proof or argument but simple assertion. In any case,
you're putting the horse before the cart. The claim is that the
no-object prefixes prove there are intransitive verbs because you
claim only no-object prefixes can go on intransitive verbs. This is
the fallacy of the "stolen concept"; you have used the concept you
are trying to conclude as a premise of the argument.
Since the definition of an intransitive verb is that it cannot take
an object, the prefix thing amounts to a tautology. If there are
"intransitive" Klingon verbs, then of course they can only take
no-object prefixes, but this does not shed any light on whether
there are or are not.
But as far as what we know about Klingon, there is no basis for
claiming that any verb cannot take an object-bearing prefix. There
is absolutely no sentence you can point to anywhere in the
dictionary that says it is illegal to put an object-bearing prefix
on any specific verb. Granted, it is not clear in some cases what,
if anything, some combinations might mean, but it is not ipso facto
illegal.
> To formalize this distinction in any
>formal grammar, spell checker, grammar checker, morphological analyzer, etc.,
>you have to mark Klingon verbs as being either transitive or intransitive. Th
e
>distinction is real in Klingon. If we had a better dictionary, transitivity
>would be marked.
To formalize it in any program would be an error since you would be
adding into the program a rule that does not exist.
>(What counts as an object, in Okrand's informal description is not completely
>clear. From the available examples, I feel it more as a direct object or
>"patient" kind of object, while Krankor has argued for loosening that
>criterion, allowing that object to represent roles other than the patient when
>the meaning is "obvious." Like most linguists, I am suspicious of what Englis
h
>speakers find obvious, and I think that we need to ask Okrand rather than
>speculate. )
I agree that getting a direct answer from Okrand is always the best
solution, but for a long time now that has simply not been possible
(although it is becoming possible now). Until we have data to the
contrary, any sentence that conforms the the published, official
rules we have is legal. If it has an "obvious" meaning, that simply
means that we can feel reasonably comfortable that we know what it
means. Be clear: I am NOT and NEVER HAVE argued for LOOSENING the
criteria that the object has to be a direct object. I have stated
the FACT that nowhere does it say that it must be. And in fact I
have presented examples where it does not.
That does not say that, as further information becomes available, we
won't learn some rules about what may or may not be considered the
"object". But it is not speculative to use the language according
to the existing rules that we have right now.
> The -moH causative suffix: Causative suffixes, in Klingon, Esperanto,
>Mongolian, and a host of other languages, are a classic mechanism for turning
>intransitive verbs (no-object) into transitive verbs (subject and object).
Again, "stolen concept" fallacy. If you are trying to use
Esparanto, Mongolian, etc. to shed some light on what we might
conclude about Klingon, then you cannot list Klingon in your list of
example languages, since that again puts your conclusion in among
your premises. Causative suffixes in Esparanto and Mongolian may
indeed be mechanisms for turning intransitive verbs into transitive
ones, but whether or not that is so in Klingon is for you to prove.
>Just the presence of such a suffix in a language suggests that TRANSITIVE vs.
>INTRANSITIVE is an extremely fundamental distinction. Some forms in -moH are
>even listed (redundantly) in the wordlists.
>taD v be frozen
>taDmoH v freeze (cause to be frozen)
>Sey v be excited
>SeymoH v excite (cause to be excited)
>puj v be weak
>pujmoH v weaken (cause to be weak)
>These basic verbs in Klingon are obviously intransitive; they should be used
>only with the no-object prefixes.
Again, assertion. They should, should they? Nothing in TKD says
they can't. Again, I don't know what they would mean, but that
doesn't mean that they wouldn't mean something.
If we had a native Klingon speaker, he might readily understand that
putting an object on one of these verbs "naked" (no -moH) might mean
something special. Then again, he might say it is meaningless
gobbledygook. But we don't know, we have no data to go on, and in
the absence of data, you cannot construe such a rule.
I certainly *will* agree that, in the examples you cite, using the
naked verb with an object would probably not result in the meaning
which obtains by adding -moH. I am not claiming that qaSey would
mean "I excite you"-- that would certainly have to be qaSeymoH. I'm
not claiming anything about what qaSey might mean. I'm simply
saying there is no rule that says you can't say it or that it is
illegal. I can write the following program in C:
main()
{ 14;
}
This is perfectly legal C. It will pass any reasonable compiler,
including the two at my disposal. Does it do anything useful? No.
Does it make a great deal of sense? No. Is it legal C? Yes.
Anyone who asserted that you can't just put a numeric constant for a
statement in C is just wrong.
> The -lu' suffix. When -lu' is added, the sense of the word is somewhat
>like the English passive, and the nominal subject of the verb in effect become
s
>the patient. Daqawlu' = "you are remembered" or "someone remembers you." So,
>in formal terms, -lu' can be added only to transitive or transitivized verbs.
That does not follow at all. Again, assertion and assumption. Even
if I pick a verb that you classify as "intransitive", I can
certainly add -lu' to it.
yaymo' Seylu' "One is excited because of victory".
> Reflexives. Here again, a verb with a reflexive suffix is well formed
>only if it is built on a transitive verb. (E.g. you cannot "sleep yourself"
Says who? You certainly cannot "sleep yourself" in English. It
does not follow that you cannot Qong'egh in Klingon. It is not
clear what that might mean, but there is no rule that says such a
construction is not well formed.
>For any grammar or program to allow jIQong'eghmoH and jIHoH'egh while rejectin
g
>*jIQong'egh, it has to know about transitivity.
That's true. But we have only your unsupported assertion that
Klingon rejects jIQong'egh.
>And we could wonder how "the water boils" would be translated.
>In the end, all we can do is ask a Klingon. I would suggest asking Okrand if
>pub is transitive or intransitive. I suspect he will say intransitive. He
>might say transitive. But I doubt very much that he will entertain the notion
>that there is no transitive/intransitive distinction in Klingon, as Cap'n
>Krankor would have us believe.
Perhaps. If he does, then we shall learn something. My case is
based on what Okrand has *said*, not on what he might say.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
To summarize:
Ken thinks there is evidence that Klingon has embedded in it some
kind of notion of intransitiveness. Perhaps. But at present the
evidence is shadowy, vague, and illusive, at best. The strongest
part of his argument is the stuff about -moH, but I don't think even
that is sufficient. But even were I to concede the existance of
such a distinction, it would accomplish nothing and get us nowhere,
for we have no data, no guidelines, no hints about how to apply this
concept, short of using English or other terran languages, to which
Klingon need not conform.
Because the issue is not really whether or not qaSey is legal, since
nobody ever tries to say anything like that. The place where this
issue surfaces is about supposed direct/indirect objects, and this
is where lack of data about how to apply the so-called distinction
is going to prove the uselessness of the distinction. In other
words, lets go back to the original example that started this all:
..> "You never need to apologize to me because of that action!"
..> ("jIHvaD" because "apologize" is intransitive.)
It is? Is it? Ken claims that Klingon has intransitiveness and
even if I agree with that, so what? How does it help us? We have
absolutely no way to claim that tlhIj is or isn't intransitive other
than reference to English, which is clearly what the speaker was
doing. Even Ken agrees that we can't just use English as our guide.
The point is that saying chotlhIj conforms to every rule we
have for legal Klingon, and the meaning is readily understandable,
so there is no basis for saying it isn't Kosher. Any other
conclusion involves making up new rules that aren't there. It is
quite conceivable that at some point Okrand will come up with rules
like that, and they may even conform to what people are asserting it
ought to be. No matter. As of May 13, 1993, there is no basis for
claiming that tlhIj is "intransitive".
--Krankor
