[Tlhingan-hol] {-meH}ed nouns

[lojmIttI'wI'nuv]

It sounds like Okrand passed up a magnificent opportunity to speak on the difference between a direct and indirect object when he brought up the topic of indirect object. It’s a pity he never got around to that.

You might enjoy the term “retronym”, if you are not already familiar with it. “Analog watch” is a retronym, as is “cloth diaper”, or as you bring up, “silent movie”. It’s interesting that we chose to invent “silent movie” instead of keeping the term “talkie” that came out before “movie” changed its meaning entirely.

Add that an “analog computer” had a reason for being called “analog”, since voltage or amperage or some other measurable level of electricity served as an analog for the stuff the computer was measuring or controlling, but now “analog” added to any term simply means “not digital”.

As for recipient, I see your point, though the knife arguably is the recipient of the action of giving. The officer is the recipient of the knife, and the beneficiary of the action of giving.

If you hit the officer, then the officer is the recipient of the hitting… and if he likes it enough to think of himself as the beneficiary, then… well… This is a public forum, after all. chaq naDev puqpu’ tu’lu’.

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



> On Jan 28, 2016, at 12:07 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
> On 1/28/2016 11:46 AM, lojmIttI'wI'nuv wrote:
>> Thank you for your thorough production of appropriate canon. I concede
>> on all points made.
>> 
>> It does seem that you argue that TKD section 6.8 in the Appendix has
>> been rendered all but invalid and should be mostly ignored, except to
>> suggest that if a direct and indirect object need to be differentiated
>> and the prefix trick is not applicable or preferred, {-vaD} should be
>> used to mark the indirect object. If that’s what he meant, he didn’t
>> present it very well, hence my misunderstanding.
> 
> TKD 6.8 is still perfectly valid. It says that the noun marked syntactically as the beneficiary can play the role of indirect object. Not all uses of {-vaD} are examples of indirect objects (e.g., {Qu'vaD lI' De'vam}).
> 
> Unless a verb has been shown to be flexible in whether its object can refer to a direct or indirect object, always assume it's only direct, and use the beneficiary to refer to an indirect object.
> 
>   yaSvaD taj nobpu' qama'
>   the prisoner gave the officer the knife
> 
> is canonical and valid.
> 
>   *yaS nobpu' qama'
>   the prisoner gave the officer (something unspecified)
> 
> is probably not valid, though we can't PROVE that with negative evidence. The only thing this can mean is "the prisoner gave the officer (to someone or something)."
> 
>> Since I didn’t have a pre-Appendix version of TKD, I took it as a whole,
>> and when I read the section on Indirect Objects, I figured inaccurately
>> that previous mentions of Objects likely implied Direct Objects, much as
>> the invention of digital watches rendered all earlier reference to
>> watches to mean analog watches.
> 
> The phrase "silent movies" didn't spring up until the phrase "talking movies" did. Until then they were just "movies." It's a retroactive name.
> 
> TKD is sloppy with its terminology, no doubt. The phrase "direct object" does not occur in TKD, and section 6.8 says "the object of the verb is the recipient of the action," which is canonically not always true. Even here, the word "recipient" is strange—in {yaSvaD taj nobpu' qama'} I'd consider the officer the "recipient," not the knife. I understand what Okrand means, but he's not using very precise words to describe it.
> 
>> I’m not sure I ever saw the MSN canon. I never subscribed. Was it shared
>> in HolQeD?
> 
> I dunno. I'll repost it following this message.
> 
> -- 
> SuStel
> http://trimboli.name
> 
> 
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