tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed May 27 23:27:00 2009

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Re: nuq bach?

qa'vaj ([email protected]) 

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 8:36 PM, David Trimboli <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I don't think {HeSwI'} is an indirect object here. Even in English you
> cannot say *"I shot the criminal the gun." You could say "I shot the
> criminal WITH the gun," but then you've just made "criminal" the direct
> object of "shot." Unless you're giving the gun TO the criminal or
> shooting FOR THE BENEFIT OF the criminal, {-vaD} is not the appropriate
> meaning.
>

The thing that nags at me against accepting the above reasoning is that this
approach wouldn't generally be reliable for figuring out German, and English
is a Germanic language.


>
> In any case, when I see {HeSwI'vaD nISwI' bach yaS}, I'm going to read
> it as "The officer shot the disruptor for the criminal." It does say
> that, whether you think "the criminal" should be an indirect object or not.
>

I don't discount the way you view that sentence - it's very likely the
correct way that Klingon as we know it works and so it's valuable
information.

But I guess I read TKD differently in terms of expectation that the brief
descriptions could pin down the concepts so tightly.  I read into the TKD
descriptions the idea of {-vaD} being it's own concept that would be
interpreted like an indirect object in some cases, and like a beneficiary in
others.  Figure out what concept behaves that way and you're getting at the
concept of {-vaD}.

The entity that the shooter is intending to hit when he shoots seems like a
natural {-vaD} to me.  But, I don't have any problem erasing that notion
once I reach the point of being convinced (which is not yet).

-- 
qa'vaj
qo'lIj DachenmoHtaH

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