tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Feb 18 01:37:15 1994

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Re: Use of question words

Kevinvo':

> The problem [of temporal (and other adverbial) relatives] arises when [you] 
> want to make one clause dependent on another.  Our tendency is to do this 
> with the 'e' pronoun.  This is fine for most sentences, such as: 
>     qama'pu' DIHoH 'e' luSov 

(Actually, this should be "qama'pu' DIHoH net Sov", according to 6.2.5 (p.66), 
which Kevin seems (from the example he uses) to be citing without checking it.  
Kevin's construction would be correct for "One knows we kill prisoners" if we 
didn't have the precise canonical description of the use of "net" for these 
cases. But that doesn't affect his argument.  To continue:) 

> [...]  In other words, to use the 'e' pronoun you need to have two complete 
> sentences.  "When he needs to stop speaking . . ." would be expressed in 
> tlhIngan Hol as: 
>     jatlh 'e' mevnISDI' 
> Since this is not a complete sentence it cannot be used as the object of a 
> verb. 

Kevin vIQochlaHbe'.

I venture to suggest using "time" explicitly, at least in simpler sentences.  
For example, for "We know when you arrived",
    poH'e' bIpawpu' 'e' wISov
literally "The time you arrived / we know it".  The use of -'e' on poH focuses 
the first clause on 'time' to make it clear that the sentence doesn't mean "We 
know that you arrived at the time" (a time? | a specific time? | some time? | 
"the" time that has already been mentioned?). 

This adverbial use of a noun, poH, at first glance seems strange, but in 
defense of it I point to the use of nouns such as DaHjaj 'today'.  In 6.7 
(Addendum, p.179), discussing the placement of adverbial elements, Okrand 
specifically refers to such use of nouns: 
    It was earlier thought that all adverbials [...] come at the beginning 
    of the sentence.  This is frequently the case, but what is really going 
    on is that the adverbial precedes the object-verb-noun construction.  
    It is possible for an element of another type to precede the adverb.  
    Most commonly, this is a time element (a *NOUN* or phrase meaning 
    'today', 'at six o'clock', etc.) 
            DaHjaj nom Soppu'   'Today they ate quickly'
    [emphasis added]

But I'm uneasy about the piling up of "'e'"s if we use that construction here:
    poH'e' jatlh 'e' mevnIS 'e' Sov SuvwI'na'
Maybe a Klingon could unwind that as easily as we unwind
    I know the man your brother said he saw you give the papers to
but I'm not sure I could.  Opinions?

- marqem

                         Mark A. Mandel 
    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200 
  320 Nevada St. :  Newton, Mass. 02160, USA : [email protected]

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