tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Sep 27 16:21:01 2002
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: The ol' transitivity thing again
ja' SuStel:
>The most likely situation (to me) is that Klingon does not have an absolute
>set of transitivity rules. A word might be used transitively or not. Some
>words may not be able to be used transitively. I don't think the choice of
>transitivity is inherent in the word.
>
>/Qong/ "sleep" is pretty clearly used only intransitively.
That sounds inconsistent. If the word {Qong} doesn't have an inherent
transitivity, how can you say its use is only intransitive? Or, the other
way around, since we're rather certain that {Qong} is used only
intransitively, how can you deny that it has an inherent transitivity?
I think you need to rephrase something, because the rest of your post made
perfect sense. (I might quibble with your calling the {Ha'quj} example
irritating, since I find it to be a clear clue to the invisible ubiquity of
the "prefix trick", but your explanation of why you call it that was fine.)
-- ghunchu'wI'