tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 11 22:38:17 1999
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Re: Ordering food
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: Ordering food
- Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 01:37:51 EST
In a message dated 1/10/1999 10:58:17 AM US Mountain Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:
<< For a counterexample, try translating a sentence like "He makes the house
white." What's the indirect object? What's the recipient of the action?
It's not as formulaic as you implied in your original note, where you said:
>...As I read TKD, I discover
>{-vaD} is the syntactic marker of "indirect object."
My point is that {-vaD} is just the syntactic marker for "beneficiary".
TKD 6.8 clarifies that indirect objects are considered beneficiaries, but
that does not mean that all things marked with {-vaD} are indirect objects.
For example, {vavwI'vaD HablI' vItI'pu'} doesn't translate easily into an
English sentence having an indirect object. >>
First, the DO of the verb "makes white" (yes, that's really just one verb) is
house.
Second, you appeared to be telling me that {-vaD} doesn't work as IO; so, I
pointed out to you that TKD says it does work.
Third, I do not say that all sentences marked with {-vaD} have an IO. Qu'vaD
lI' De'vam is MO's own example of a sentence which my English teacher would
not have diagrammed as havin an IO. She would have called that an obejct of a
preposition.
Finally, this type of discussion proves that Klingon and English are not
alike. We cannot afford to think in terms of English. We must think as
Klingons.
peHruS