tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 04 09:41:30 2008
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Re: intransitive vs. indefinite object
Doq wrote:
>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).
>
>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.
IIRC in Klingon and English transitive action verbs can be used
intransitively (i.e. without a stated object), but unfortunately the
reverse isn't the case.
Okrand actually mentions this in TKD:
TKD p. 32ff.: /0/ in the [verb prefix] chart means that the particular
subject-object combinations are indicated by the absence of a prefix before
the verb; /-/ in the chart notes subject-object combinations which cannot
be expressed with the Klingon verb prefix system. For such meanings,
suffixes (section 4.2.1) and/or pronouns (section 5.1) must be used. The
prefixes ... used when there is no object; that is, when the action of the
verb affects only the subject (the "doer") ... In the case of {Qong}
"he/she/it sleeps, they sleep", the exact subject would be indicated
elsewhere in the sentence or by context. This set of prefixes is also used
"when an object is possible, but unknown or vague. Thus {jIyaj} "I
understand" can be used when the speaker understands things in general,
knows what is going on, or understands what another speaker has just said.
It cannot, however, be used for understanding a language or understanding a
person. Similarly, {maSop} "we eat" can be used to indicate a general act
of eating, but not if a specific food is mentioned.
>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.
Tell me about it! In some cases, usage in canon helps with this problem
but there are still too many verbs with just a brief gloss in the
vocabulary which have never been used in a sentence that we have no clue about.
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons