tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed May 10 13:53:40 1995
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Re: Transitivity
>Date: Tue, 9 May 1995 18:50:40 -0400
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: [email protected]
>On Mon, 8 May 1995 17:09:01 -0400, "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]> said:
>> Perhaps it's meaningful to say "?rav vIQong" with the object
>> of "Qong" being the surface the person or animal slept on
>> (why not with -Daq? Who knows, the language is strange).
>Every language is strange in its own way, but although variation tends
>to be great, it tends not to be random. That is, there is a universal
>reason for which languages are loath to equate the surface of sleeping
>with the victim of killing. Any event can have a location; that isn't
>a central component of the semantics of the predicate. That's why, as
>a general rule, locations are adjuncts (oblique terms), not arguments.
Heh. OK, so I picked perhaps a bad choice for the putative object. Then
again, the object of "gho'" is the thing stepped on as well. Whatever; as
Tom Lehrer says, what's important is understanding what you're doing, not
getting the right answer.
>> In Loglan (not Lojban), the "object" of the predicate analogous to
>> "tIn" is something the subject is bigger than, which would therefore
>> do away with law'/puS and in the normal sense would leave it elided:
>> bigger than something I'm not talking about.
>Maybe the object of {tIn} should be something the subject is as big as,
>doing away with the concerns about how to say `as big as a spaceship',
>and elision would yield `as big as something (else)'.
Just to make sure nobody misunderstood; I never would propose that the
object of "tIn" in Klingon would really be something it's bigger than. If
that were so, Okrand would never have told us about law'/puS. I was giving
an example from another constructed lang.
Your idea is interesting... but you know as well as I do that that kind of
addition would be somewhat more than we can comfortably do without Okrand's
approval. After all, who who did not hear this duscussion would ever
understand "?qatIn" for "I am as big as you are"?
>> I certainly can believe that there are intransitive verbs
>> that take objects with meanings we might not expect.
>Of course. But would the language go out of its way to promote an
>adjunct to an object for every intransitive verb merely for the sake
>of making all verbs transitive?
I wouldn't think so either. But I wouldn't be surprised if there were more
transitive verbs lurking in the lexicon than we might think based on their
one-word English glosses. But you wouldn't be either.
>--'Iwvan
~mark