tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri May 29 18:37:48 2009
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Re: -vaD
- From: Doq <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: -vaD
- Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 21:36:32 -0400
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One of the thorniest things about alien languages is the use of
prepositions (or postpositions, in languages that use them). The issue
is that this is a higher level of grammar, later to develop than lower
level ideas like "noun", "verb", "subject" and "object". For the most
part, prepositions are arbitrary in any language.
I approach the store. It's the direct object. I go to the store. Now,
there's the preposition "to". I arrive at the store. Now, there's the
preposition "at". All three are verbs that, in this usage, mean that I
start somewhere else and end up at the store. The prepositions used
are arbitrary and memorized as we learn each verb and its usage.
The Moon goes around the Earth. It circles the Earth. It orbits the
Earth.
I shoot the criminal. That means I hit him. I shoot at the criminal.
You don't know whether I hit him or not. Prepositions give finer
meaning to verbs, but again, it is arbitrary. You learn what the
conventions are for each usage and memorize and repeat them. You can
come up with original ones, and sometimes they work for everybody, and
sometimes they don't.
You hang a criminal, but you hang up a picture. You don't hang up a
criminal, though you might hang a picture, though you do hang up a
phone and you never hang a phone, unless you are mounting a wall
phone, and that's completely different.
We can't expect Klingon to rigidly follow any system of Type 5 suffix
use. Any time Okrand wants to throw us a curve, all he has to do is
create canon that is different from what we expect, since those Type 5
suffixes are as close as we get to prepositions in Klingon. I guess
they must be postpositions, since by being suffixes, they sort of
follow the word they modify. That's probably the only Japanese
parallel to Klingon.
Anyway, there's no canon that I've seen supporting your idea that {-
vaD} means "to". Okrand explains to us that it marks the beneficiary
of an action. In English, many indirect objects happen to be
beneficiaries, so often you can mark indirect objects with {-vaD}, but
that's a lot like noticing that many English sentences in the passive
voice can be translated by using {-lu'} and making the mistake of
suggesting that {-lu'} is the same thing as the English passive voice.
It's not.
I don't recommend that you continue to hold the minority opinion that
{-vaD} means "to". It won't give you many Klingon speakers to talk to
if you use it that way.
It's really easy to mistakenly decide that you have a unique
understanding of some granular element of the Klingon language that
differs from everybody else and you are the one who is right. I've
done this too many times and it has not served me well. I regret every
instance of this error.
Doq
On May 28, 2009, at 2:14 AM, [email protected] wrote:
> I've always been of the (minority) opinion that the three suffixes -
> Daq,
> -vaD, and -vo' mean simply "at", "to", and "from".
> I follow established usage (as much as I can), but I think such
> usage is
> wrong, particularly in the case of -Daq and -vaD.
>
> lay'tel SIvten
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