[Tlhingan-hol] KLBC : Sentences as objects

[De'vID]

lojmIt tI'wI' nuv:
>> He said that the direct object of {ja’} was the person or persons
>> being addressed, hence {ja’chuq} being translated as “discuss”
>> because it involves people telling each other something.

SuStel:
> If he ever said this, it never entered the canon. Was this something he said
> to you personally, or was it part of an interview or a published source? I
> remember in your HolQeD interview with him on the topic YOU made this claim
> to HIM, but he didn't say anything about it.
>
> ==
> WM: Are there any other verbs of speech that you would care to
>     comment on?
>
> MO: Are there any other verbs of speech?
>
> WM: And a typical direct object of {ja'} would be the person addressed and a
> typical object of the verb {jatlh} would be the thing you say.
>
> MO: The speech event.
>
> WM: I like that term.
>
> MO: Including a direct quote. I'm telling a story. He "blah, blah, blah"
> {jatlh}.

For the record, this is from HolQeD 7:4, Dec. 1998, in case anyone
wants to look it up.

When I read that (however many years ago, when I first read it), I
also got the impression that MO was affirming what WM suggested. It's
hard to tell from the transcript, of course, whether MO ignored what
was said about the object of {ja'} because it's an implicit
affirmation, he didn't hear or understand it, or he chose to focus on
something else. But the wording allows a bit of wriggle room: the
"typical" object would be the person addressed, and that seems to be
the case with most canon uses of {ja'}.

TKD is full of examples of {ja'} used with the person addressed as the
object. No need to list those.

The {paq'batlh} has a number of instances of {ja'} where the content
of what's told is the object of {ja'}:

{Qo'noSDaq boqwI'mey / nejmeH je leng qeylIS / 'ej chaHvaD lut ja'}
"Kahless also went out to search / For allies across Kronos, / And
told them his tale."

{wIj jup / SengmeywIj vIja'laHbe' / jIHvaD ratlh pagh}
"Dear old friend, / I cannot speak of my tragedies, / There is nothing
left for me."

And then there's the very weird:
{quv HIja'chuqQo'}
"Don't speak to me of honor."

The {paq'batlh} also has some instances where the person addressed is
the object of {ja'}. So it has both.

There's also this phrase from the greeting video sent out by Marc
Okrand about the opera {'u'}:
{qatlh tlhIngan lut luja' tera'ngan DawI'pu'lI'?}
Why are your earthling actors telling a Klingon story?

It seems to me that the way to make sense of all of this is that,
while in proper grammar the object of {ja'} is the thing reported and
the recipient is indicated with {-vaD}, in "typical" usage it just
happens to be the case that the prefix trick is applied very often
with this verb, making it look as if the person addressed is the
"typical" object.

Recall that the original intended use of {ja'} (what was originally
supposed to be {ma'}) was something along these lines:
*{qaja'pu': DoS, jonta' neH}
"I told you, target: engines only"

-- 
De'vID