tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed May 10 14:34:16 1995
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Re: Transitivity
On Wed, 10 May 1995 17:16:29 -0400, "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]> said:
>> From: [email protected]
>> On Mon, 8 May 1995 17:09:01 -0400, "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]> said:
>>> In Loglan (not Lojban), the "object" of the predicate analogous to
>>> "tIn" is something the subject is bigger than [...].
>> 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.
> [...] 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.
And you know very well (but let it be stated explicitly nonetheless)
that I was not proposing any addition, any more than you were. I was
simply playing your game, thinking aloud about what the object of {tIn}
might mean if {tIn} had an object. The difference is that you appealed
to Loglan for your hypothesis, whereas I made up mine.
> 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.
No, I shouldn't. But there is a difference between there being many
transitive verbs in Klingon and there being a rule saying that every
Klingon verb is transitive. Many verbs which are intransitive in,
say, Hungarian have transitive counterparts in English, but that
doesn't mean that English has no intransitive verbs.
--'Iwvan