tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jul 09 01:42:36 2000

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RE: Raise Your betleH to the Stars.....



I've heard you repeat this enough times now that I feel compelled to repeat
my reply to it, which was never acknowledged.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Anderson [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Friday, July 07, 2000 8:02 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Raise Your betleH to the Stars.....

...
> >Further, what with all the ambiguity of <-Daq>, if a Type 5
> Suffix must be
> >used, then <-vaD> is the logical choice.
>
> {-vaD} is only the logical choice when you're talking about a beneficiary.
> There's no beneficiary apparent to me in "toward the stars".

TKD page 180, section 6.8, entitled "Indirect objects" and not
"Beneficiaries" Okrand says:

"While the object of a verb is the recipient of the action, the indirect
object may be considered the beneficiary." I don't think he meant "may" as
in, "maybe it can or maybe it can't be considered the beneficiary". I think
he meant that you can assume that any indirect object can, for grammatical
reasons, be considered the beneficiary. The rest of the paragraph certainly
favors this interpretation:

"In a Klingon sentence, the indirect object precedes the object and is
suffixed with the Type 5 noun suffix {-vaD} /for, intended for/. The suffix
may be attached to either a noun or a pronoun." None of this suggests that
only indirect objects that ghunchu'wI' considers to be beneficiaries of the
action will be qualified to use {-vaD}. If it is an indirect object, it gets
{-vaD}.

The question then becomes, when you consider the verb, can it take an
indirect object, and if it can, what noun can fulfill that function?

I'm not going to try to argue that in this case, {-vaD} should be used
because I honestly dislike every single translation I've seen here using
{pep}, whether it uses {-vaD} or {-Daq}. I honestly think you guys are using
the wrong tools for the job. You have words you've used in English and you
are determined to make a sentence out of the Klingon words that have the
same definition. This is a bad approach to translating anything. It always
has been. It always will be.

My suggestions have already been ignored, so I have been doing my best to
ignore this whole thread, but I can't deal with seeing less experienced
Klingonists told repeatedly that {-vaD} is only used for "beneficiaries"
without having the term explained to include all indirect objects. When you
do this, you leave them to think, "Hmmm. Beneficiaries. Okay, does the noun
in question benefit from the action of the verb?" It is not that simple.

charghwI' 'utlh

> ><<Hovmey lurghvaD betleHraj yIpep>> 'oH mu'tlhegh lurgh. net Sov Hoch.
>
> Qochba' 'op.
>
> While the phrase in <<..>> marks is grammatically acceptable, I disagree
> completely with using {-vaD} here, and {betleHraj yIpep} is a bit odd.
> You're commanding whoever you're addressing to raise a single betleH which
> belongs to multiple people.  Saying either {betleHraj tIpep} or {betleHlIj
> yIpep} works better in my brain.
>
> The rest of your comment does have a couple of real errors.  When using a
> pronoun in the sense of "to be", the subject receives the noun suffix
> {-'e'} (see TKD 6.3).  And the pronoun {net} is used only when the verb's
> subject is intended to be "one" or "someone" (see TKD 6.2.5, the middle of
> page 66).
>
> -- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh
>
>
>



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