tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jan 07 19:37:15 2001
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Re: the word `dative'
ja' Jiri Baum <[email protected]>:
>What I meant was that this is one of those words where translating the
>etymology really does help. It comes from the Latin word ``give'', so the
>paradigm example (case example, I guess) should involve that word.
>
>You will probably keep using the word ``dative'', but it's good to know
>where it comes from.
I see three real problems with using the term "dative" here. First, it's
an unfamiliar term for most people who want to learn Klingon. Second, it
only applies to a part of what the Klingon noun suffix {-vaD} can indicate.
Third, in its "indirect object" sense, {-vaD} is being used to indicate the
*recipient* of the benefit of the action, so the translated "giving case"
sounds backwards from what this particular Klingon meaning really is.
>And as a native speaker of an inflected language, it amazes me sometimes
>the convolutions people will go through to avoid saying ``suffix 5 is the
>case marker and -vaD is the dative case''.
It's not quite as simple as that. In Klingon, many "cases" are indicated
by position [*] rather than by suffix, and there are times where a type 5
suffix isn't really a case marker. Mainly, {-'e'} has no bearing on the
role of a noun in a clause, but on occasion other type 5 suffixes get used
on the subject or object of a relative clause.
The real trouble is that most people who speak English have no concept of
what a "case marker" is, and explaining Klingon using grammatical terms
which are most useful for a much more complicated language like Latin is a
bit intimidating.
-- ghunchu'wI'
[*] what some would call nominative, vocative, genitive, etc.