tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jul 09 01:44:31 2000
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RE: Deixis and direction
This is a very interesting perspective. Notes below.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Trimboli [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Friday, July 07, 2000 12:23 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Deixis and direction
>
>
> > jatlh charghwI':
> > > I can see why, for a certain abstraction of the grammar, it might be
> > useful
> > > to group together these different grammatical functions as
> you have, but
> > to
> > > declare that differentiating among them is baseless is a bold
> statement
> > that
> > > I find useless.
>
> Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention in this part. I'm not saying that
> differentiating among the various sorts of header nouns is a bad thing or
> baseless. It's a good thing. TKD does it. You need to understand the
> difference between a locative and a beneficiary, for instance, so that you
> can use them correctly (saying /DujvaD/ when you're trying to express the
> concept of "location of the ship" or "inside the ship" is
> obviously wrong).
> I'm saying that their difference is in their meaning, not their
> grammatical
> structure.
I'm trying to understand why you seem to consider word order to be the only
thing that defines grammatical structure. The form of a word affects more
than its meaning. It also affects its grammatical function.
I think we actually come very close to agreeing with each other. For years,
I've believed that the basic structure of a simple Klingon sentence is:
[Context for the action] [Object] Verb [Subject]
That first section contains time stamps, locatives and all other Type 5
appended nouns (except for sometimes {-'e'}) and all {-meH} clauses that
apply to the verb and not the subject noun. This is the reason I
stylistically prefer to put dependent clauses before the main clause, since
these clauses often act as time stamps or otherwise set the context for the
action. Meanwhile, it is quite permissible for most dependent clause to
follow the main clause, instead, so this "context first" model only goes so
far.
Meanwhile, I do see as much of a grammatical difference between a locative
and an indirect object as I do between a locative and a direct object. You
would say that the direct object is part of the grammatical structure that
is different from "header nouns", while the indirect object is not, and this
is where we disagree. You are saying that OVS word order describes grammar
while Type 5 noun suffixes merely describe meaning. Different suffixes imply
different meaning, not different grammar, according to you, but I don't
believe it.
> (If I did use /DujvaD/ instead of /DujDaq/ for the example
> above, I'd have gotten the wrong noun, not the wrong grammar.
> /DujvaD/ is a
> noun, not a noun plus grammar.)
By this reasoning, no noun is a noun plus grammar, so the subject also is
lacking any grammatical significance. It is just a matter of meaning. I
doubt you'd find that acceptable. It is not just position that defines
grammatical function. It is position or form, and the suffixes constitute
formal indication of grammatical function.
> One can speak syntactically correctly while saying semantic
> nonsense. TKDs
> "differentiation" of these nouns also helps one understand which is
> appropriate to use. It doesn't prescribe grammar regarding these, it
> illustrates what "works" and what doesn't.
Form describes grammar. Your disinterest in recognizing this doesn't make it
invalid.
> SuStel
> Stardate 515.2
charghwI'