tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jun 15 19:38:45 2000

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RE: Raise your betleH to the stars.....


> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Trimboli [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2000 11:55 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Raise your betleH to the stars.....
>
>
> jatlh charghwI':
>
> > > But can I use
> > > Hovmey lurghDaq betleHlIj Dapep
> > > for Raise your Batleth to (towards) the stars     ????
>
> [...]
>
> > So, if we can't be sure {-Daq} works that way, what CAN we be sure of?
> Well,
> > we have the nouns {DoS} and {ray'} which are likely useful
> here. You want
> us
> > to raise our betleHmey. You want us to aim them. The stars are our
> targets.
>
> I only just recently started to follow this discussion, but let
> me throw in
> my support for the use of /DoS/ or /ray'/ in this context.  It doesn't
> answer the original question, but does provide an alternative.  (I'm not
> absolutely entirely convinced that "locative" is a completely separate
> concept from "object."  With the HolQeD interview, we at least have some
> evidence of locatives that are also objects.  I'm not so certain
> that /-Daq/
> cannot mean "in the direction of."

I agree that nouns with {-Daq} can definitely be the direct object of
certain verbs. I don't  believe this is true for just any verb, arbitrarily.
One of the whole points of the interview was to determine for as many verbs
as possible if this (a noun with {-Daq}) were valid as a direct object. He
generously listed quite a few verbs that do or do not work this way and told
us which worked which way.

I'm also not really certain that {-Daq} can't mean "in the direction of",
though I am uncertain enough that I really feel bad enough using it that way
that I simply feel better casting it some other way to avoid doing it.

> > You seem to be describing "aiming" and the stars are the
> "targets" of that
> > aiming. In ST3, there was an order that Kruge gave to his
> gunner. "Target
> > engines only!" That would have been a perfect example if Okrand had
> actually
> > written it that way instead of it being a fudged outtake of the line, "I
> > wanted prisoners." Or was the outtake the other way around? I forget.
>
> The line is /qama'pu' jonta' neH/.  One of the most interesting
> sentences in
> the history of the development of Klingon.

Agreed.

> It originally meant "I said 'target engines only!'"  /ma/ was "say," and
> /-pu'/ was a past tense marker.  /qa-/ was still the "I-you" verb
> prefix we
> know and love today.  /jonta'/ was only "engine," and /neH/ was
> only "only"
> (sic).
>
> Then they changed it to mean "I wanted prisoners!"  /-pu'/ was
> doubled as a
> plural marker for people, and /ma'/ was dropped from the vocabulary.

Well, not quite dropped. Changed to "accommodate" the director of the film.

> /qama'pu'/ changed from "I told you" to "prisoners."  The word /jon/
> "capture" was added, and the idea of tense in Klingon was dropped in favor
> of aspect, to allow /-ta'/ "completed intentionally."  The concept of
> Clipped Klingon was also invented at this point to explain why
> the subtitle
> wasn't "I wanted to capture prisoners."  The Sentence As Object
> construction
> was devised to explain the presence of two verbs, the second verb
> being the
> newly-added /neH/ "want."  The "no aspect on the second verb in
> an SAO" was
> also created here to explain why it wasn't /jon neHta'/.

Good analysis.

> With this one sentence, the structure changed considerably.  Much of the
> natural feel of the language comes from the irregularities and
> special rules
> created by this simple subtitle change.

I think this is even more interesting when compared to the similarly weird
grammar created to make Valkris's English lip movements match dubbed
Klingon. The interesting part is that, while the use of {rIntaH} to imply an
emphatic {-pu'} perfective exists exactly once in canon, and so really has
not affected the language at all, Kruge's kludge invented new, commonly used
suffixes and a whole new sentence structure, along with lasting, useful
vocabulary.

> > A locative is not a direct object. It is a locative. It is the
> place where
> a
> > thing happens.
>
> A locative is a noun with the suffix /-Daq/ or /-vo'/ on it.  As
> we learned
> with the last Okrand interview in HolQeD, there are times when a locative
> CAN be the object of the verb.  One hopes that such locative objects can
> only be used with specific nouns of motion, or else we have two different
> locative functions: locatives indicating where the action takes place, and
> locatives indicating where the action is heading for.

The interview was pretty clear about this. The locative-as-direct-object is
possible only with specific verbs, and even then, the {-Daq} is optional on
the direct object. Meanwhile, these same verbs work just like every OTHER
verb if the prefix does not indicate that the locative is a direct object.
By that, it means that the action occurs in the location indicated by the
locative. In English, we also use prepositional phrases (our equivalent of
locative nouns) to indicate targets of verbs ("I saw you in the mirror"
doesn't mean I was in the mirror while seeing you)...

Hmmm. Possibly as a counterexample of my own argument, didn't Okrand once
say that the joke about "I shot an elephant in my pajamas... and how it ever
got in my pajamas, I'll never know" would work in Klingon as well as it does
in English? Meanwhile, I never saw him give an actual Klingon example that
would follow this rule, so I was forced to consider that maybe it was just a
casual remark that wasn't very accurate.

> SuStel
> Stardate 453.6

charghwI'
Stardate 457.4

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