tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jul 02 22:57:41 2000
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Re: Deixis and direction
----- Original Message -----
From: David Trimboli <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, July 03, 2000 3:08 AM
Subject: Re: Deixis and direction
> jIjatlh:
> > > Doesn't the pouring happen in the room where I'm standing while
pouring?
>
> jatlh charghwI':
> > Much as it happens in the city where the room was built and the planet
> where
> > the city exists and the star system where the planet spins... You can
> always
> > zoom out, but the point I'm making is that the pouring happens in the
cup.
> I
> > don't think it is really possible to argue that the action of the
pouring
> > DOESN'T happen in the cup.
I thought [qang] meant "pour from one thing to another/decant".. wouldn't
that (and this is a question) mean that if a target of the pouring was
specified it would be the indirect object of the sentence with the direct
object, if specified, being the liquid..???
As to pouring into something I thought the verb used there was [lIch] -
pour (into/onto anything). In this case as into/onto is implied in the
action.
>
> Well then we're going to have to disagree. And if we disagree on this one
> point, we must by necessity disagree on the semantic structure of
/HIvje'Daq
> yIqang/. As far as I'm concerned, if you're trying to pinpoint a location
> for where the action of "pouring" takes place, it can either be assumed to
> be the place that the pourer is, or the mouth of the container which the
> liquid is coming FROM. If you took a pitcher of water and a cup, put the
> cup on the ground outside a building, walked up to the top floor of that
> building, and poured the water so that it ended up in the cup, the action
of
> pouring would be happening somewhere at the top of the building, not down
in
> the cup.
>
> This difference of opinion as to how the ENGLISH works is exactly why I
> think we need to avoid proclaiming absolute subject, objects, etc. for
> Klingon verbs, unless there is no question by the vast majority of
speakers.
> We're necessarily biased by our native language. Imagine a group of
people,
> identical to ourselves except that they speak Basque. They have their own
> mailing list for Klingon, and they're discussing, arguing, debating, and
> Okrand also happened to write a Basque Klingon Dictionary and identical
> Klingon canon translated into Basque. Some of them will want to catalogue
> each and every Klingon verb's transitivity, subjects, objects, and so
forth.
> I'm utterly convinced that they'd develop a far different understanding of
> Klingon semantics than we have even though they've got exactly the same
> sources.
> [--snipped--]
>
> SuStel
> Stardate 504.0
qe'San