To "throw at" X

Original question text:

> Btw, how to say “throw at X” in Na’vi?
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> **Oel tsre'i tskxet ne nga**.
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> I throw a stone to (direction) you. [this sound ‘neutral’]
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> or
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> **Oel tsre'i tskxet ngaru**.
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> I throw a stone to you (dative). [this would imply that one would give a stone to someone]
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> or
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> **Oel tsre'i tskxet wä nga**.
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> I throw a stone against you. [this would have an aggressive meaning]
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> **Eltur tìtxen seiyi**.
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> I like all your three suggestions. Ne does indeed imply the physical act of throwing towards someone, keeping with the idea that verbs of motion use ne as the place towards which the motion is directed. Here the English translation would be, "He threw a/the stone *to* me."
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> The dative case would be used in the sense of giving the stone to someone, although there's some overlap here with ne. Here again the English would be, ""He threw a/the stone *to* me."
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> And **wä** would have an aggressive connotation. The translation here would differ: "He threw a/the stone *at* me."
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Original question text:

> I’d like to ask some explanation about “throw at” conversation you have had recently with Tìtstewan.
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> Here are two sentences with your explanation:
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> 1/ **Oel tsre'i tskxet ne nga**.
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> Ne does indeed imply the physical act of throwing towards someone, keeping with the idea that verbs of motion use ne as the place towards which the motion is directed. Here the English translation would be, "He threw a/the stone to me."
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> 2/**Oel tsre'i tskxet ngaru**.
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> The dative case would be used in the sense of giving the stone to someone, although there's some overlap here with ne. Here again the English would be, ""He threw a/the stone to me."
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> English version of both examples is the same, what is a little confusing, as meaning is not completely the same. It can be well seen in translation into my native Czech:
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> 1/ **Oel tsre'i tskxet ne nga** -> (já) Hážu kámen k tobě. This sentence emphasizes direction, where stone is being thrown. It doesn't say anything about intention to hit you or transferring stone from me to you. I can hit you or not – but only direction is what matters.
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> 2/ **Oel tsre'i tskxet ngaru** -> (já) Hážu kámen tobě is perfect parallelism with **tìng** - stone is transferred from me to you by throwing instead of giving from hand to hand (and meaning is positive, I don't want to hit you, but move the stone from me to you).
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> Is this way how we should understand these two sentences? I think it is limitation of English that it can’t express the difference – for exact meaning we should translate 1/ as  I throw stone in direction to you.
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> Are these thoughts correct?
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Original correspondence text:

> I think your analysis is very good, B.E. The sentence with **ne** implies, as you've said very clearly, direction: "I threw the stone in his direction." One way to express that in English is to use "towards": "I threw the stone towards him." And the **ngaru** sentence implies intentionally transferring the stone by throwing rather than giving by hand: "I threw him the stone."
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> Now that I think of it, when we say in English, "I threw the stone to him," it's almost always the second interpretation rather than the first.
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> To be a little clearer about that:
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> (1) I threw the stone towards him. DIRECTION
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> (2) I threw him the stone. TRANSFERRING FROM ONE TO ANOTHER BY THROWING
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> (3) I threw the stone to him.
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> I think the answer is that in English, almost always, (3) = (2). I can't think of natural examples where (3) = (1).
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> So I should have used "towards" in the translation of the **ne** sentence.
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*Originally received on March 2nd, 2015*