tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jul 12 18:25:12 1998
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Re: QoghIj qaD
mujang SuStel:
>>Qermaq jang SuStel:
>>>>nuq vIje' vIneH?
>>>
>>>Ick: question as object.
>>
>>In this case, it *is* a question, so it doesn't sound wrong to me.
>>The question word substitutes for the answer, exactly the way questions
>>are supposed to work in Klingon.
>
>In other words, you *like* this one, so you're not going to argue against
>it.
I'm not going to argue against it because it carries the correct meaning
if the grammar is interpreted as explained in The Klingon Dictionary. I
"like" it basically because it works the way Klingon interrogatives are
intended to be used.
>I believe Okrand recently told us (or rather, told one of us at a
>convention) that questions cannot be objects. In {nuq vIje' vIneH} you have
>a question as an object. Whether you like it or not, it is a question as
>object sentence.
It will take some more explanation than the near-hearsay of Okrand's
statement that a "question" (not my quotes, but I'm not sure if they
are Okrand's either) cannot be used as an object before I will state
that {nuqDaq maba' DaneH?} is ungrammatical.
>Perhaps it IS correct, but I haven't seen any objective reason to believe
>that.
The primary argument against Sentence-As-Object was that they weren't
obviously using the question word to ask a question, and if they were
interpreted as a rhetorical question, the object of the second verb
was referring not to the questioning sentence itself but to a single
word of its answer. That flaw does not exist in {nuq vIje' vIneH}.
I think your "Ick" is a knee-jerk reaction to something that merely
resembles a pattern of poor or incorrect grammar. Like {-ghach}, it
isn't a priori a bad thing.
-- ghunchu'wI'