tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Dec 09 07:11:25 1996
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Re: jaH
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>Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 08:52:15 -0800
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>
>On Wed, 4 Dec 1996 16:24:36 -0800 Nick Nicholas
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> It may just point to a similar preposition having
>> to be used with the verb in the target language. We have been imbuing Okrand
>> with foresight in including prepositions in the definitions, but there's a
>> very simple reason why he wouldn't say 'go to', but 'go': 'to' is the default
>> preposition built into 'go' in English. 'To go' means 'to go to', by default.
>
>No it doesn't.
Um, Nick... Will has a point. To put it in Lojban terms, the English word
"go" includes not just klama, but also litru and cliva. In English, it IS
possible to "go" with no destination. It sounds to me that "ghoS" is meant
to be a very something extremely close to Lojban klama (at least the first
two places).
I think I worried about this a lot less than you and Will are, when I read
it. I read Okrand's line about ghoS and "some" verbs of motion taking
direct objects as an indication that Klingon grammar in this area is a bit
more permissive than usual; that verbs of motion (which verbs these are is
deliberately left vague, and perhaps there isn't even a clear distinction;
the grammar and usage are permissive here, as they are in some areas of
English and Chinese) can blur the line between dative/locative and direct
object, putting the latter in the grammatical place of the former (the same
happens in Sanskrit, btw: Raamo vana.m gacchati/Raama goes [to the] forest,
with "forest" in accusative, not dative). So I didn't try to draw the line
of exactly which words did which; it sounded to me like Okrand was being
deliberately permissive. Sounds like that's not a widely-accepted reading,
though. And I can understand that.
~mark
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