[Tlhingan-hol] Objects, direct and indirect

[Rohan Fenwick]

jatlhpu' De'vID:
> If {SoHvaD quv vIja'} = {quv qaja'} and {jIHvaD quv Daja'} = {quv
> choja'}, can these be combined using the prefix trick into *{quv
> maja'chuq}? After all, we can combine {qaqIp} and {choqIp} into
> {maqIpchuq}.

vIjangpu' jIH, jIjatlh:
> There are a lot of problems with that idea. Firstly, what would the
> non-prefix-tricked version of this be?

jang je De'vID, jatlh:
> {maHvaD quv wIja'}

Ah, right. Thank you for the clarification. Such a sentence still seems somewhat weird to me, in the same way as ??"I look at me in the mirror" does. But we don't know anything at all about reflexives outside of the sentence core in Klingon and so that may just be an English bias talking.

jIjatlhqa'pu' jIH:
> Secondly, the prefix trick can only *add* an object to the verb prefix,
> not delete one.

jangqa' De'vID:
> The object isn't deleted here, it's hidden by {-chuq}.
> {SoHvaD quv vIja'} = {quv qaja'}
> "I-tell-it honour for-the-benefit-of-you" = "I-tell-you honour"
> {chaHvaD quv wIja'} = {quv DIja'}
> "we-tell-it honour for-the-benefit-of-them" = "we-tell-them honour"
> {maHvaD quv wIja'} = *{quv maja'chuq}
> "We-tell-it honour for-the-benefit-of-us" = "We-tell-each-other honour"
> The prefix trick changes the verb prefix. When you say that it "add"s
> an object, I think you mean it changes "I-it (for you)" to "I-you it",
> right?

Yes, that's right, that it brings a new argument into the argument structure of the verb rather than taking one out. I don't think the way I expressed my thoughts in this point was quite accurate and I apologise for that.

taH:
> But the same thing is happening in my example: it changes "we-it
> (for us)" to "we-us it", except that "we-us" is expressed as {ma-} +
> {-chuq}.

I suppose that last is where it falls down for me. I don't see {ma-} + {-chuq} as "we-us" as such. While it's true that {-chuq} influences the verb prefixes, the way I understand it is that it does so only indirectly, by changing the verb's action from "do X" to "do X to each other" such that the only prefixes that then make practical sense are the ones in which there's no object: to pilfer SuStel's terminology, "we-us" is equivalent to {ma-} + {-chuq} only semantically, not morphosyntactically. Though again, this is just the way *I* understand it.

jIH:
> Thirdly, {maqIpchuq} doesn't mean the same thing as {qaqIp 'ej choqIp}.
> There need not be any second person involved at all in {maqIpchuq}, for
> that matter.

De'vID:
> I think what you're saying here is that {maH} can mean "he and I" or
> "she and I" and not just "you and I".

Yes, that's right. I understood the way you were putting it, but it just seemed to me that, to take a maths metaphor, the terms weren't balanced on both sides of the equation - it wasn't a true equivalence.

taH:
> You're right that Klingon "we" can be either inclusive or exclusive,
> but I was just using an example. We could have just as easily carried
> out the analysis with {jIHvaD} and {ghaHvaD}, etc. Maybe it was
> confusing to break up "we" as "you and I" in my example, and I
> should've just done everything as {maH}.

Fair enough.

jIH:
> Finally, combining {qaqIp} and {choqIp} is not the prefix trick anyway,
> so talking about combining concepts "using the prefix trick" just doesn't
> make sense at all to me. I honestly just don't understand it.

De'vID:
> Does the transformation of {maHvaD quv wIja'} into {quv maja'chuq}
> make more sense?

It still doesn't work for me, but I do understand better how you got there.

QeS 'utlh
 		 	   		  
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