tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 22 02:44:29 1994
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Re: Use of question words
On Fri, 18 Feb 1994, Captain Krankor wrote:
> But you just stated it yourself. Things that use 'e' are in fact
> two complete sentences. A question *is* a sentence. If I say:
>
> nuqDaq yuch pol 'e' vISovbe' "I don't know where he keeps the chocolate"
>
> That's two sentences. The first one is indeed a question, as
> evident by the presence of the question word nuqDaq. The two
> sentences are:
>
> nuqDaq yuch pol "Where does he keep the chocolate?"
>
> 'e' vISovbe' "I don't know that."
>
> Because 'e' sentence pairs tend to be closely coupled and are
> generally expressed as one English sentence, our convention is to
> not use punctuation between them. But we could. Suppose I had
> written it instead as:
>
> nuqDaq yuch pol? 'e' vISovbe' "I don't know where he keeps the chocolate"
>
> Would you still have a problem with it?
>
> --Krankor
>
Kevin responds:
I am afriad I would still have a problem with it, O captain, my captain.
I agree that we do have two sentences here and so the grammar is
technically correct. The problem is that the resultant sentence does not
make sense. It translates "I do not know where does he keep the
chocolate?" The first part of the sentence is a question, but this
question completely disappears in your translation. "Where does he keep
the chocolate?" is indeed a question in tlhIngan Hol; "where he keeps the
chocolate" is not.
I think the problem arises from the word "where" in English.
The word "where" can be an interrogative pronoun, in which case it
corresponds to the tlhIngan Hol "nuqDaq". But the English "where" can
also be a relative pronoun of place , which as I read it, has no corresponding
tlhIngan Hol word. The difference between the two is the the difference
between saying "In what place?" and saying "In the place that . . .".
I find no indication that Okrand intended "nuqDaq" to be function in both
senses.
As a mere junior officer I do not wish to offend my commanding officer, so
I eagerly await proof that I am wrong and am prepared to submit when such
proof is forth coming.
Qapla'
Kevin