tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Apr 30 09:13:15 2008
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Re: Klingon WOTD: ngIp (verb)
First, I wonder if it has not been established the {Qub} takes objects.
Second, I don't think the first option below is valid because SAO
implies that the sentence as object is a separate sentence, and
{qatlh} has no role in that sentence. The sentence as object is not
encapsulated in the following sentence. It precedes it.
The second option makes the most sense to me, but I think canon
actually points to the third option, even though I don't understand
the grammar, and I don't think Okrand ever explained it.
I would have dodged the bullet here and asked more directly:
chay' Dochvam vIrur?
That assumes that I'm not insulted by the comparison. If I were
insulted, I wouldn't speak. I'd act.
In other words, I don't care what you think. I care about whether or
not you have observed a similarity between myself and this thing you
have compared me to. If I don't understand the comparison, I'll ask
you to explain the comparison. If I do understand the comparison, and
I don't like it, I won't bother asking you about the comparison. I'll
just teach you to be more polite in the future, or I'll eliminate the
potential for future insults, depending on how insulted I feel.
Doq
On Apr 29, 2008, at 10:36 PM, Sangqar wrote:
> Warning: Sorry for any misspellings. I am typing this in the dark
> since
> my son won't fall asleep if the light is on.
>
>> qatlh Dochvam vIrur 'e' DaQub?
>
> When crafting the above sentence, I followed the general pattern of
> question word-object-verb here, as in
>
> qatlh Hiq Datlhutlh?
>
> But now I'm not sure. It seems to me there are three possibilities:
>
> qatlh SAO 'e' DaQub?
> SAO qatlh 'e' DaQub?
> SAO 'e' qatlh DaQub?
>
> The first one seems the most natural, but I could make a case for the
> second one, as well, since the first might be ambiguous. On the other
> hand, if QAO is impossible, as most people on the list seem to agree,
> the first could not be ambiguous. (The second sentence could still be
> considered easier to parse, though.)
>
> Since we know we can split SAO into two sentences, the second one
> could
> be repunctuated to make it definitely correct:
>
> SAO. qatlh 'e' DaQub?
>
> The third one seems just plain wrong to me, since it puts the question
> word after the object. But who knows what lurks in the mind of Okrand?
>
> So is there a consensus on placement of question words in sentences
> with
> SAO?
>
>
>