tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Mar 11 04:20:31 1994
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Re: Qaghqoq
>I'm not sure if I can envisage Okrand saying something pleasant here. He
>either (1) makes them all intransitive (the sensible, Volapuk approach);
>(2) makes them all transitive (the unsensible approach, since Klingon
>doesn't have the equivalent of Esperanto -igx); (3) randomises transitivity
>according to verb (what natural languages do, but guaranteed to make me
>throw away my TKD, and I doubt I speak alone); (4) leave it up in the air
>(the Krankor option so far --- and I suspect the likeliest.) What I've seen
>in corpus is that he ignores transitivity distinctions (tagh used
>intransitively, chegh used transitively --- showing he has no Lojbanic
>compunctions which could lead to approach (1)) --- so I'm not sure he'll
>say anything to *resolve* this issue.
Well, first off, Klingon *does* have something like the Esperanto {-igx}.
It's {-moH}+{-lu'}. 'e' vIQIj 'e' vInID:
If you want to refer to an object that has "got cleaned", you would probably
say {Say'moHlu'}. This implies that some indefinite subject is/was/will-be
engaged in the action of cleaning it. It is clearer than saying simply that
it is clean ({Say'}), because that doesn't imply that an action, but only
describes a state (cleanliness).
Imesho, I think we should leave transitivity 'up in the air'. That is, we
should not consider verbs to always have an specifically defined object. This
is the case with many verbs, like {jatlh}.
{HoD jatlh} Object is the one being spoken to.
{nuqneH jatlh} Object is a quote.
{tlhIngan Hol jatlh} Object is a language.
All of these are most likely grammatical and easily understood. The concept
of transitivity in Hol is quite different from our concept of it in English
and related languages.
Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos