tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 02 05:06:24 1994

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Re: Complex sentences and question words



On Wed, 2 Mar 1994 17:19:16 -0400 (EST, Kevin Wilson wrote:

>
>SuvwI'pu' quv,
>
>	In translating Genesis I came across the sentence "Why did you
>tell me that she is your sister?"  Sounds easy enough, but I found that I
>could not decide where to place the question word.  According to TKD 6.4,
>the question words nuqDaq, ghorgh, qatlh, and chay' all come at the
>beginning of a sentence.  But what about the case of complex sentences? 
>According to 6.2.5 a complex sentence in tlhIngan Hol is actually two
>sentences.  As I read it, one of the following choices is correct.
>
>	(1) qatlh be'nI'lI' ghaH 'e' qaja'ta'
>
>	(2) be'nI'lI' ghaH qatlh 'e' qaja'ta'
>
>	(3) be'nI'lI' ghaH 'e' qatlh qaja'ta'
>

If you came up to me and said option one, I would try to give you a basic 
lesson in biology, explaining that we have the same parents, thus we are 
siblings.

According to how I read section 6.2.5, it never states that the pronoun 
{'e'} or {net} must be the first word of the sentence.  Thus if you used 
english puncuation, I would write:

be'nI'lI' ghaH.   qatlh 'e' qaja'ta'

Which is a version of your number 2 option.

You might also note that according to section 6.2.5, "In complex sentences 
of this type, the second verb never takes an aspect suffix", thus you 
should not include the {ta'} on {ja'}
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