tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 13 05:09:22 2006
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Re: transitivity
- From: "QeS 'utlh" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: transitivity
- Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 23:09:06 +1000
- Bcc:
ghItlhpu' ter'eS, ja':
>Why do you say that any non-stative can take an object?
vIjangpu', jIja':
>"He flew a short flight". "He slept the sleep of the dead". Going from what
>Okrand said in this interview, it seems like those could theoretically work
>in Klingon, too, but in practice it doesn't happen that way:
>"The other tricky thing is some people say you can put any prefix on any
>verb. I suppose that you can, but just because you can doesn't mean that
>you should." (Okrand to charghwI', HolQeD 7.4)
mujang, ja':
>My problem with this is that virtually any verb could then
>be construed to have the maximally allowed number of arguments
>in the given language, but in the vast majority of cases, most of these
>arguments wouldn't be expressed. This
>seems enormously inefficient to me.
To play devil's advocate for a second (for I've come to agree with you on
some points): the choice is between two options.
1. The semantic valency of all verbs is the same, and the usual
*grammatical* valency needs to be learned separately for each verb.
2. The *semantic* valency needs to be learned separately for each verb, and
the grammatical valency adheres to the semantic valency for all verbs.
I don't see how either one of these is much more efficient than the other.
In fact, maximum argument expression broadens what can theoretically be said
with any verb.
>It seems more likely to
>me that a verb has a prototypical number of arguments at
>the semantic level, which (for efficiency's sake) would be
>the minimum number needed for normal communication, i.e.,
>the number of arguments that native speakers of the
>language typically think are necessary to express the typical
>meaning of the verb. Operations that change the valency of
>this prototypical number would be possible, but not common,
>and would be highly marked.
As you've pointed out, the semantic and the grammatical valency need not be
the same for any given verb. I agree on one level, but on another level I
disagree, because there are many verbs for which these valency-changing
operations *are* common, and the distinction is wholly based in conveyance
of meaning, not based on ideas of what's marked and what's not. To take one
common verb in particular - {Sop} "to eat" - the grammatical valency is
roughly divided between monovalent and bivalent. Obviously underlyingly
bivalent, but the monovalent meaning is so common that I would not call it
marked at all.
>To me "live a Klingon life" is possible in English, but as highly
>marked in English as (I believe) it is in Klingon (I don't immediately
>think "Live what?" when confronted with the verb "to live").
No, but that doesn't mean that "live a Klingon life" is necessarily highly
marked. When someone says "I'm eating" in English, I'm not left thinking
"Well, *what* are you eating?"; the focus is on the action rather than the
object, in what some languages use an antipassive construction to do.
>And I think it follows that some usages would be so highly marked
>(i.e., weird) that nobody would do them in normal discourse ("just
>because you can doesn't mean that you should.").
Like {Qong}, for instance. We just don't have any nouns that could possibly
come after {Qong}.
ja'taH:
>For that matter, why do you call {Qong} a non-stative?
vIjangtaH, jIja':
>Read "stative" as "able to be used adjectivally". I thoroughly reject, for
>instance, *{jIH Qong law' SoH Qong rap} "I slept as much as you".
muja'taH:
>Actually, that looks pretty tempting..., but you're right,
>{Qong} isn't an adjective. I think I'm using some
>wrong terminology.
No, I don't think you are using wrong terminology. In normal linguistics
jargon, I believe "stative" refers to a verb that refers to a state with no
explicit duration and no explicit end point - like {Doq} "be red", {Qong}
"sleep", et cetera. Klingon linguistics has come to use "stative" to refer
to a particular category of such verbs which are always intransitive, which
can be used in the Q position of the construction {X Q law' Y Q puS}, and
which can be used adjectivally.
>While all statives are intransitive, not all intransitives are stative,
>but I forget the term for them.
Active, or dynamic, perhaps. {Qong} is a classically stative verb "to sleep"
transformed into its active/dynamic counterpart "to fall asleep" by {-choH}.
I can't think of any dynamic intransitives in Klingon at the moment, but
that's because it's late and I need to {jIQongchoH}. {{:)
QeS 'utlh
tlhIngan Hol yejHaD pabpo' / Grammarian of the Klingon Language Institute
not nItoj Hemey ngo' juppu' ngo' je
(Old roads and old friends will never deceive you)
- Ubykh Hol vIttlhegh
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