tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 04 08:10:58 2008

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intransitive vs. indefinite object

Doq ([email protected]) 

I'm building my first dictionary. Tedious, that. I'm going through old  
word lists, canon, archives and whatever else I can find. I'm building  
it in Bento, a beta database for computers running Mac OS X 10.5.1.  
I'm starting to realize that there is a difference between words used  
intransitively and words used with an indefinite direct object.

For example, {chot} is murder. It is obviously transitive. {qama' chot  
'avwI'.} But you don't always have to have a direct object. {chotpu'  
qama'vetlh.} Is that intransitive? Not really. You know the prisoner  
has murdered a direct object that is a member of the nouns appropriate  
for the verb {chot}. You just don't know which one, and likely, you  
don't care. I'd prefer to call that "indefinite" rather than  
"intransitive". It is, to a direct object, what {-lu'} is to a  
subject. You know there is one. You just don't care which one it is.  
You might not even bother making the prefix suggest that a direct  
object exists.

That makes a kind of shadow prefix. All the intransitive prefixes  
double as indefinite prefixes (for the direct object).

Meanwhile, that is not quite like the truly intransitive {Sal}. There  
is no noun in a class of nouns with the potential of being the direct  
object of {Sal}.

And that is not the same thing as the stative verbs that can be used  
as an adjective, like {bIr}. All stative verbs are intransitive, but  
some intransitive verbs are not stative.

English has verbs that are both transitive and intransitive, like  
"move". "I moved the chess piece." "The chess piece moved all by  
itself." "I dropped a rock." "A rock dropped from the sky." "I drove  
the car to Cleveland." "The car drove 400 miles before it ran out of  
gas." Hmmm. In that last one, it seems you can drive a car and you can  
drive a mile. Very different relationship between the verb and the  
direct object. I thought I was creating an intransitive use of  
"drove", but instead, it was transitive, suggesting that it would have  
been indefinite, had I said, "The car drove until it ran out of gas."  
So, the indefinite/intransitive thing can be really sneaky.

So, I go back and all of my previous examples could similarly have a  
distance as their direct object. "The chess piece moved three inches  
all by itself." "A rock dropped thirty feet before I caught it."

But are the distances really direct objects, or are there missing  
words here we accept because they are so common? "A rock dropped three  
inches from my foot." That answers the question "where" the rock  
dropped. That's kind of adverbial. I think I'm confused. I'm mired in  
grammatical salad.

Okrand doesn't seem to give us a lot of clues about some words as to  
which type of verb any particular verb might be.

And then, there's the {-moH} issue. You can convert a stative or an  
intransitive verb into a transitive one with {-moH}. But the slippery  
slope might carry you to use it on an indefinite verb, too, since that  
looks a lot like an intransitive one. And if you can use it on an  
indefinite verb, then what's to stop you from using it on the same  
verb used transitively?

tuj SojwIj. SojwIj tujmoH qulvam.

Sal Duj. Duj SalmoH 'orwI'.

DuSaqDaq jIghoj. mughojmoH HoD Qanqor. tlhIngan Hol vIghoj. tlhIngan  
Hol'e' mughojmoH HoD Qanqor.

I can't think of another way to say, "Captain Krankor teaches me  
Klingon language."

I wish there was a dictionary that defined the appropriate class of  
direct object nouns for each verb. That would significantly improve  
proper usage.

Doq

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