[Tlhingan-hol] Objects, direct and indirect

[Rohan Fenwick]

jIjatlhpu' jIH:
> What about {-moH}? It's a tool specifically for increasing the count
> of actants by one, and for monovalent verbs, that means adding an
> object. Whatever you take {wIqawchuqmoH} to mean, I contend that
> it is absolutely grammatical. {-chuq} deletes the object of the basic
> bivalent verb {qaw}. {-moH} adds a new object to the newly-monovalent
> verb {qawchuq}. What's so problematic about that?

mujang lojmIt tI'wI' nuv, jatlh:
> Well, consider who is causing whom or what to remember, and what
> they are remembering. We cause each other to remember. The {-chuq}
> defines the direct object. But you want this direct object to become an
> indirect object, like {wo'rIv} in {wo’rIvvaD tlhIngan Hol vIghojmoH}, so
> that you can make room for the third person noun referred to with the
> {wI-} prefix. That’s pretty radical. I think it’s fair to call that problematic.

No. I said "Whatever you take {wIqawchuqmoH} to mean". That's a direct quote. You're assuming that I want it to mean "We cause each other to remember", but I'm not saying that; what I'm saying is that I believe {wIqawchuqmoH} is grammatical in Klingon. I'm *specifically* not talking about what it means; it could well be "We cause (people unspecified) to remember each other". Well, not quite, I suppose. That'd be {DIqawchuqmoH}, since {-chuq} requires a plural participant. But that's not the criticism you're making. You misrepresent my argument and misunderstand my point. De'vID claims that pronominal prefixes marking overt objects cannot be used with {-chuq}. I'm saying that they almost certainly can when {-moH} is involved. That's ALL I'm saying here. No more than that.

taH:
> For myself, I’m already challenged to do a decent job of translating normal
> ideas into or from normal Klingon grammar and vocabulary. I don’t feel so
> driven to warp the rules in significant ways in order to solve nonexistent
> problems with the language.
> You are accomplishing nothing here in terms of expanding what the language
> can express. You are just toying with rules that you’d probably find boring if
> you didn’t get to play with them.
> These are basic, fundamental rules of grammar. Why are they so hard for you
> to accept? And why aren’t you writing more in Klingon and writing about it
> less?

tlhIngan Hol HaDmeH mIw'e' vIlo'bogh DatIchtaHvIS, tlhoy bIloyHa' je. tlhIngan Hol ghItlhmey law' vIqonlI'qu' - tetlhvaD neH tlhIngan Hol QIn law' vIqonbe'pu'. jIroptaHqu'mo' qaStaHvIS DISvam lunungbogh 'op DIS'e'', QIn tetlhDaq QInmey puS neH vIngeHlaH, 'ach lut mughtaHghach Qu'meywIj vIrInmoHlI'qu', 'ej wa'Hu' neH jIQubpu', «tIvlaHmeH latlh jatlhwI'pu', <mIl'oD veDDIr SuvwI'> lut 'ay'mey vIlabqa' vIneHchoHlaw'» jIja''eghpu'. 'ej jIruchbej jay'. 'ach tlhIngan Hol wIHaDmeH maH latlhpu' mIwmeymaj tIraDQo'. Holvam Hoch wIyaj 'e' DaHarchugh SoH, vaj yIruch SoH. 'ach 'e' vIHarbe' jIH'e' - tlhIngan Hol pabna' Qatlh law' chutmey'e' QIjlu'chu'pu'bogh Qatlh puS 'e' vIHarqu', ghItlhmeyDaq <pab motlh> luchIwbogh latlh law''e' 'ej QIjchu'be'ta'bogh Marc Okrand DItu'laHtaHqu' 'e' vIHarqu' - 'ej vIja'lu'chugh «bIjatlh 'e' yImev 'ej tlhIngan Hol yIjatlhqa', maqoch», jInuQchoH.
 
You insult the way I choose to approach my own Klingon study, and assume much in doing so. I'm writing plenty of Klingon - just not to the list. Health problems have prevented me from engaging much with the list in the last couple of years, but I've been continuing with my translation work in the interim, and just last night I was thinking about starting to post more of my translation of {mIl'oD veDDIr SuvwI'} for the potential enjoyment of the others on the list. And I will, too. But do not dictate to the rest of us how we approach our study of Klingon. If you think we already know all about this language there is to know, more power to you. For my part I don't believe we do - I believe this language is even richer than we already know, that we can still discover much in canon that hasn't yet been explained explicitly by Marc but still constitutes "normal grammar" - and I don't appreciate being told, in essence, to shut up and talk more Klingon, kid.

ghItlhpu' De'vID, jatlhpu':
> That's what I thought when I first saw it, but then it was pointed out
> (by ghunchu'wI' the last time we tried to dissect {quv HIja'chuqQo'}
> on this mailing list) that TKD was very explicit about {ja'chuq}.
> According to TKD 6.2.4: The verb is made up of {ja'} "tell", {-chuq}
> "each other"; thus, "confer" is "tell each other".
> So, the sentence {quv HIja'chuqQo'} contradicts what's written in TKD,
> either in section 4.2.1 or in section 6.2.4.

vIjangpu' jIH, jIjatlhpu':
> Yes, it does. Blatantly so. But there it is, not only bivalent, but prefix
> -tricked-out into the bargain. The sentence could have quite simply
> been the more pedestrian {quv HIjatlhQo'} "don't talk [about] honour
> to me", but it isn't. It simply begs for an explanation, and the best
> explanation, to me, is simply that {ja'chuq} is here acting as a lexified
> verb that can take an object.

jangqa' lojmIt tI'wI' nuv, jatlh:
> I see it as one of four things, in order of increasing violation of known
> grammar:
> 1. It’s a direct quote, and should have been punctuated {<<quv.>>
> HIja’chuqQo’!}

This explanation fails to address the issue of adding an object to {ja'chuq}, and so is not functionally separate from your second possibility. Any verb that takes an object can use the prefix trick with {HI-}.

taH:
> 2. {ja’chuq} has now been declared a separate root verb from {ja’}.
> It can take direct objects other than the members of the plural subject.

That's how I understand it.

taH:
> 3. Something else that neither you nor I have thought of yet.

What do you think the point of this discussion is, if not to try to come to an understanding of how these constructions work and what that can tell us about how Klingon works more generally? We can reach a likely conclusion and do productive things with it, and still change our understanding in the face of new evidence later on. If we're always waiting for the "something else that neither you nor I have thought of yet", we're never going to get anything said in Klingon at all, and you've said many times that's your highest driving force - to get things said.

taH:
> 4. Your theory that the clear description of how {-chuq} works stops
> applying if {-moH} is added.

And this has nothing to do with {quv HIja'chuqQo'}.

Now, I'm going to go on to deal with this:

ghItlhpu' lojmIt tI'wI' nuv, jatlh:
> Since {wo’rIv} is the one who is caused to learn and {pa’} is
> the thing being caused to be hot, it follows that {pa’vaD tujmoH
> qul} should be the right and proper way to write “The fire heats
> the room.” The room is the beneficiary of the heating as much as
> Worf is the beneficiary of the teaching. Why do we draw a line
> here? What is the difference? Nobody has touched this yet,
> apparently because it is ugly and messy, so those arguing this
> point just ignore it and try to redirect the problem away from
> facing the grammatical issue at hand.

For my part I've tried to avoid talking about this particular issue in this specific thread because my drawing comparisons to Terran languages has drawn accusations of "Klingon doesn't have to work like Terran languages" in the past. In fact, it drew precisely that accusation last time I addressed this issue on the list, some years ago.

But here goes.

What is happening in Klingon is a clear and simple (in my eyes, at least) instance of syntactic demotion. Semantically, a causative of a bivalent verb *does* have two functional objects: one is the causee, one is the original object. The fact that causatives of monovalent verbs take a direct object shows that the causee is, underlyingly at least, an object. But syntactically, Klingon doesn't permit there to be two objects in a sentence, so in order to represent both of the objects of the causative of a bivalent verb, one of them has to be demoted out to another syntactic role. Talking about the {-vaD}-marked object here specifically as a "beneficiary" is a little misleading because {-vaD} can also mark a somewhat less classically benefactive indirect object, which we're told in the TKD addendum. It's this function of {-vaD} that's relevant here. The way this demotion takes place, at least if the S20 example is to be taken as representative (dangerous with a hapax, I know), is that the causee is the noun demoted, and it's shifted into the header, where it takes {-vaD}.

In Earth languages with polypersonal agreement, this is overwhelmingly the pattern that occurs as well. The Terran language I specialise in, Ubykh, has the exceedingly rare property of carrying tripersonal agreement: it carries overt markers for the subject, the object, AND the indirect object on its verbs. It also has morphological causatives, which make it a perfect example for the phenomenon we're talking about here. In monovalent verbs like /kʲ’a/ "to go", causativisation adds an object and the verb then conjugates just like a normal transitive verb:

/s-kʲ’a-n/ "I (s-) go" > /a-z-də-kʲ’a-n/ "I (z-) make it (a-) go"

Compare the transitive verb /bja/ "to see", which has the corresponding form /azbjan/ "I see it". But if you want to make a causative from /bja/, there's a problem. Ordinarily you'd just add an object. But in Ubykh, as in Klingon, there's no way to have a second direct object noun in the sentence. Consequently, one noun has to be demoted. And the simplest way of doing that - i.e. the one that causes the least disruption in the argument structure - is to demote the causee (because demoting the object causes *both* arguments of the plain transitive, the subject and the object, to be displaced in the causative). And what happens is that the causative verb shows explicitly that the causee gets demoted to indirect object, marked by a prefix that appears in between the markers for the direct object and the subject:

/azbjan/ "I (z-) see it (a-)" > /awsəbjan/ "I (sə-) cause you (w-) to see it (a-)"

This kind of object-demotion into the indirect object is pervasive among languages of the world that have morphological causatives. Georgian has it (unrelated to Ubykh, despite its geographical proximity), and many other languages have it. There's my explanation, lojmIt tI'wI' nuv. There's the tool that turns this from "ugly and messy" into elegant and explained by one simple rule: syntactic roles in the causative sentence are filled in a hierarchy, the highest-ranking available slots first. Subject, then direct object, then indirect object. We don't *know* that in the sense of that Marc hasn't sat down with someone and said "this is how it works", but it's a hypothesis that fits all the evidence for causatives we have in canon and allows us to make more productive use ourselves of a grammatical tool that we're given in TKD. And this isn't even the first time I've put forward that hypothesis on this list. It's frustrating, after 15 years of learning this language, to have you accuse me of just wanting to "toy" with rules - like as though I'm intentionally working against your goal of having people speak better Klingon; like as though I'm intending neither to put these principles into action to improve my own Klingon writing and speaking so that they better reflect what a Klingon would actually say, nor to encourage others to use the canon to make their own Klingon richer and more adept.

QeS 'utlh
 		 	   		  
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