tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jun 12 14:29:45 1995
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Re: tay or toq (was Re: What's wrong with "which"?)
>Date: Mon, 12 Jun 1995 09:12:52 -0400
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: [email protected]
>Fri, 9 Jun 1995 23:09:06 -0400 ghItlhta' yoDtargh:
>>On Fri, 9 Jun 1995 [email protected] wrote:
>If my Capt. were to ask me to scan the Sol system and then ask me {tay
>Hovtay'vam yuQ nuqDIch?}["Which planet of this star system is civilized?"],
>I would have to answer {"pagh"}["none"].
>If instead he were to ask me {toq Hovtay'vam yuQ nuqDIch?}["Which planet of
>this star system is inhabited?"], I would then have to respond with
>{"wejDIch yuQ"}["3rd planet"].
I've been reading this whole interchange with half an eye, but I wanted to
chime in with something here.
Are you asking about the well-known problem of how to say "which of"? A
lot of folks (including me) have been saying "yuQ nuq" or "yuQmey nuq" for
that (what of the planets, what that is of the planets). Ther was some
talk about "nuq yuQ" but I don't see much support for that.
Are you looking for a specific "which" that is numeric (as in "planet
number what")? That would be implied by your (non-canon) use of -DIch on a
non-number. So long as we're postularing extended use of -DIch, for this
meaning I'd rather see "?'arDIch", analogous to the also proposed
"?'arlogh" for "how many times." Note that I'm not advocating that either
of these are legal Klingon... only that perhaps Okrand may tell us they
are. I don't much like "?nuqDIch"; it doesn't seem sensible to put what is
so plainly a number-suffix on a questioning "noun"-like word, when there's
a question-word that's more associated with numbers ('ar; though notably
'ar does not behave like a number: it follows its nouns rather than
preceding them).
~mark