[Tlhingan-hol] Because you mentioned it (Was: Expressing instrumentality)

[SuStel]

On 4/22/2016 10:51 AM, lojmIttI'wI'nuv wrote:
> It’s like saying, “I give the blood pie to my sister.” “I give the 
> blood pie.” “I give my sister.”
>
> No, I don’t give my sister. I give TO my sister.
>
> English does have the quirk of saying, “I give my sister the blood 
> pie,” and if anyone is trying to teach English to someone else and 
> they get to this example, they should take the time to explain how 
> this weird little example works, because it really is never okay to 
> say “I give my sister” in this context, if you don’t mention the blood 
> pie, and that’s what Klingon is doing here.

This isn't a quirk or a weird little example. In English, /I give my 
sister the blood pie/ has a direct object, /the blood pie,/ and an 
indirect object, /my sister./ In the sentence /I give the blood pie to 
my sister,/ there IS NO indirect object: there's a direct object, /the 
blood pie,/ and a prepositional phrase, /to my sister.

/That's because we're changing the syntax, not the semantics.

You're still analyzing the Klingon sentence according to its semantics, 
when what you need to do is analyze it according to its syntax only. 
Forget for a moment what the words mean in connection with the verb: 
that's semantics. Okrand is constructing his sentences based on syntax.


> If {ghojmoH} really means “teach” and not “cause to learn”,

*ghojmoH* means that learning is done and someone causes that learning 
to happen. It doesn't "mean" either /teach/ or /cause to learn;/ those 
are just English translations. Don't analyze a Klingon sentence with 
reference to the English translation's grammar.

*ghojmoH* by itself doesn't say anything at all about what is being 
acted upon. There is no "correct" meaning of noun to put in the object 
position. There are nouns that won't make sense if you put them there, 
but that doesn't make them illegal, just nonsensical. I can say *Duj 
ghojmoH,* and while I don't know what it means, I do know that learning 
happens, someone causes it to happen, and a ship is being acted upon. 
HOW it's being acted upon is not made clear by the isolated example, but 
it satisfies syntax to put it there. If you want to understand what the 
sentence means, you need to supply semantic context.

In other words, the object of *ghojmoH* can be anything that makes sense 
to be "acted upon." If the action of learning is said to act upon a 
person, you interpret that person as the student. If the action of 
learning is said to act upon a realm of knowledge, you interpret that 
knowledge as the lesson.

Klingon doesn't really have a distinct indirect object. It has a 
benefactive, which can assume the role of indirect object when it needs to.

> So, it’s like he took the definition “teach” and then mashed the 
> Klingon through a literal translation of the English,

It can look that way, but that's not what he did.

Here's an old chestnut: can you put an object before *Qong?* Obviously 
not; you can't **Duj Qong* /sleep a ship./ But there's no SYNTACTIC 
reason you can't say this. There's no rule that says you can't put an 
object in front of *Qong.* It just doesn't make SENSE to do so. Okrand 
never uses the terms /transitive/ or /intransitive /to refer to Klingon 
verbs; I don't think they are classified that way. There are verbs that 
refer to states or qualities and verbs that refer to actions, but none 
are actually forbidden from taking objects. There's no rule that says 
**Duj Quch tlhIngan* /the Klingon is happy the ship/ is a syntactically 
invalid sentence; it just doesn't make any sense, so you don't say it. 
English /be happy/ uses a completely different grammar than Klingon's 
*Quch,* wherein /the ship/ has no syntactic role in the sentence. But 
the syntax of the Klingon sentence is completely clear.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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