[Tlhingan-hol] {-meH}ed nouns

[SuStel]

On 1/28/2016 9:59 AM, lojmIttI'wI'nuv wrote:
> Earlier examples, and Okrand’s explanation in his interview in HolQeD
> suggest that {ja’} has a person as a direct object,

You suggested that; he did not confirm it.

    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}.

> while {jatlh} has a noun representing a speech or a language or
> something that is said as the direct object.

Okrand stated this in an MSN posting, not in the HolQeD interview.

> Later, Okrand either changed his mind or got sloppy and used {ja’} in
> a way very similar to {jatlh}, so apparently either a person or a
> noun representing something spoken can be the direct object.

Since he never committed to direct objects for {ja'}, he didn't get 
sloppy or change his mind.

When looking at a Klingon sentence's syntax we can tell what is an 
"object" or not based on where it is, but not whether it's a direct 
object or an indirect object. There doesn't seem to be an absolute rule 
regarding those. MOST of the time the object is a direct object, but not 
always.

{ja'} is just one of those cases where the object could be either the 
direct object or the indirect object, depending on context. Some 
{-moH}'d verbs also do this.

> So, if Qov told me, “Don’t bother me,” I’d translate that as either:
>
> muja’ Qov <<HInuQQo’!>>
>
> or
>
> <<HInuQQo’!>> muja’ Qov.
>
> Here, I chose to use {ja’} because I’m saying that she told ME.

I don't think this is the difference between {ja'} and {jatlh}. {jatlh} 
means to speak, regardless of whether someone is hearing you. It means 
to make vocal sounds. It might imply doing so only in prose, but we 
don't know that. {ja'}, on the other hand, implies communication, 
imparting of information. It doesn't necessarily—I think—require vocal 
sounds.

> {jatlh} doesn’t take a person as a direct object, and since the
> quotation is not the direct object of the verb of speech, the prefix
> trick doesn’t work here. The {mu-}, in this case, tells you that I
> really am the direct object. >

This is incorrect. In his MSN post, Okrand explained that the prefix 
trick CAN be used with {jatlh} to show an indirect object:

    This, then, brings us back to your question.  Since the object of
    jatlh is that which is spoken, and since "you" or "I" or "we" cannot
    be spoken (and therefore cannot be the object of the verb), if the
    verb is used with a pronominal prefix indicating a first- or second-
    person object, that first or second person is the indirect object.

    Which is a not very elegant way of saying that qajatlh means "I
    speak to you" or, more literally, perhaps "I speak it to you," where
    "it" is a language or a speech or whatever:

            qajatlh "I speak to you"

            Sajatlh "I speak to you [plural]"

            chojatlh "you speak to me"

            tlhIngan Hol qajatlh "I speak Klingon to you"
            (tlhIngan Hol "Klingon language," qajatlh "I speak it to
            you")

    There's another wrinkle to this.  The verb jatlh can also be used
    when giving direct quotations:

            tlhIngan jIH jatlh "he/she says, 'I am a Klingon'"
            (tlhIngan "Klingon," jIH "I," jatlh "speak")

            jatlh tlhIngan jIH "he/she says, 'I am a Klingon'"

    (With verbs of saying, such as jatlh, the phrase that is being said
    or cited may come before or after the verb.)

    If the speaker is first or second person, the pronominal prefix
    indicating "no object" is used:

            tlhIngan jIH jIjatlh "I say, 'I am a Klingon'"
            (jIjatlh "I speak")

            tlhIngan jIH bIjatlh "you say, 'I am a Klingon'"
            (bIjatlh "you speak")

    There are instances where the pronominal prefix marks a big
    distinction in meaning:

            tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh "you speak Klingon"
            (tlhIngan Hol "Klingon language," Dajatlh "you speak it")

            tlhIngan Hol bIjatlh "you say, 'Klingon language'" [that is
            "you say the phrase 'Klingon language'"]

            (tlhIngan Hol "Klingon language," bIjatlh "you speak")

> When he introduced the idea of direct quotation to us,

In TKD? That's where he first uses it.

    qaja'pu' HIqaghQo'
    HIqaghQo' qaja'pu'
    I told you not to interrupt me

> he said that {jatlh} was the only verb known to be used for direct
> quotation, but he left open the option to expand that list of verbs
> of speech that could do this, and over time he has done so,

In his interview with you he said that {jatlh} and {ja'} were the only 
verbs of saying (to use the term used in TKD) that he knew about. This 
immediately contradicted the older Power Klingon examples of {tlhob} as 
a verb of saying:

    lutlhob naDevvo' vaS'a'Daq majaHlaH'a'
    They ask him, "Can we get to the Great Hall from here?"

> So, SuStel may very well have been giving you good advice that was
> easily misinterpreted. In an earlier argument, I hung on the idea that
> {ja’} always had a person as the direct object while {jatlh} always had
> a unit of speech as the direct object. It is the way these verbs were
> introduced,

Verbs of saying were introduced in TKD without any explicit objects at 
all, only verb prefixes. This does not tell us whether the prefixes are 
referring to direct or indirect objects; prefixes can refer to either 
kind of object.

Since then we've gotten examples of {ja'} with both people being told 
and things being reported as the explicit object of {ja'}. As usual, we 
work out whether they're direct or indirect based on context, not 
sentence position or inflection.

> and it gives the language a reason to have two different verbs for
> “said”.

{ja'} does not mean "say," it means "report, tell." In English, these 
words have different connotations.

> SuStel argued that {ja’} could be used like {jatlh} with units of speech
> as the direct object and provided canon to prove it, so he’s completely
> right on this,

The canon comes from TKD, which uses {ja'} as its example of a verb of 
saying. Subsequent canon has used {jatlh} and {tlhob} as verbs of 
saying. Okrand wasn't sure there weren't more verbs of saying than 
{jatlh} and {ja'}, but my theory, which I don't push on anyone, is that 
anything that SEEMS like a verb of saying can be used as a verb of 
saying ({tlhob, ghel, jach, tlhup,} etc.).

> and he has a special interest in objects, with the likely accurate
> theory that certain verbs have an interesting quality of using a
> couple of different kinds of nouns as a direct object, alone, or one
> of them becomes an indirect object, if both appear. {ja’} fits that
> theory.

That some verbs can use different kinds of nouns as direct object is 
stated flatly by Okrand in his MSN post, where he says {jatlh} can have 
as a direct object either the language spoken or the "speech event."

Again, let us be clear. Klingon sentence structure is of the form O-V-S. 
The "O" means "object." It does --->***NOT*<--- mean "direct object." 
Being a direct object is a SEMANTIC role that the object may play; being 
an indirect object is also a semantic role the object may play. Direct 
objects and indirect objects can both be used in the object slot, but 
only one noun (phrase) can appear in the object slot at a time, and 
different verbs allow different kinds of noun (phrases) in their object 
slots.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name