tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun May 04 14:52:10 2014

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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Canon for answering negative questions

Robyn Stewart ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

Thanks all.  I've introduced -be' and -qu' and -'a', and shown them working
together, but as I can demonstrate the question in canon but not the answer,
I shall advise students to avoid posing non-rhetorical questions of this
type.

There is a lot of stuff that we do or feel, but is not attested in canon,
and I want to give beginners the truth as we know it, and let them
extrapolate or insert their own biases, not teach mine or yours.

I'm about halfway through the course. It's challenging using ONLY the
grammar that is assigned to level one. No adjectival verb use, no noun-noun
and -'a' is the only type-9 verb suffix. If anyone would like to write a
little enrichment piece--fiction or non-fiction--restricted to the
vocabulary and grammar of some stage of the course, I'll set you up with the
restrictions.

- Qov

-----Original Message-----
From: DloraH [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: May 4, 2014 10:58
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Canon for answering negative questions

> > What canon do we have indicating whether the answer to a
> negative question like :
> >
> > 'umbe''a' loDHom?
> >
> > would be
> >
> > HIja', 'um.
> >
> > or
> > ghobe', 'um.
> 
> I don't have any canon, but what reason is there to think it wouldn't 
> be {HIja', 'umbe'} to begin with? The answer to {'umchoH'a'} is 
> {HIja', 'umchoH}, and the answer to {belHa''a'} is {HIja', belHa'}, 
> etc. I can't think of any reason {-be'} should behave differently than 
> any other suffix in how it interacts with {-'a'}.
> 
> Qov:
> > All I can think of is cheDuQchugh mareghbe''a'? which is of
> course rhetorical.
> 
> ghobe', mareghbej.


In your examples you did say more than just "yes" or "no".  You answered
with a sentence expressing the correct state.  But when answering simply yes
or no, there can definitely be confusion.

I don't know about the rest of the world, but here in the US, we encounter
too many people that slaughter the language, speaking with double negatives,
say things like "I can't see nothing." (I encountered this one just
yesterday.)  Such a person that does speak like that could certainly give a
different answer than someone who is a computer programmer with a hobby in
linguistics.

I give answers like, "That is correct, he is not qualified."


-- DloraH


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