tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Dec 02 16:48:56 1996

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RE: Embedded wh-questions

On Monday, December 02, 1996 6:37 PM, David Trimboli[SMTP:[email protected]] 
wrote:

> December 02, 1996 1:06 PM, jatlh Holtej:
>
> > Now, what I'm wondering is, how do we say, "who do you think the 
officer
> > hit?"
> >
> > 	'Iv qIp yaS 'e' DaQub?
> >
> > This doesn't feel right to me.  It doesn't feel like we're questioning 
the
> > matrix clause here.  It feels more like "Who did the officer hit?  You
> > think that."  Other attempts by my mind to twist this into a more
> > reasonable form (semantically) fail syntactically.
>
> It's interesting: are you suggesting that we don't like this because of
> English bias (that of moving the question word up to the matrix clause)? 
 I'd
> like to hear more . . .

That's the second time recently you've accused me of not liking something 
in Klingon based on an example I gave in English.  (Them's fightin' words!) 
 I'm really not basing my question on the interpretation of the English. 
 I'm using the sentences to show a grammatical structure.  When I wonder 
about how a sentence like /'Iv qIp yaS 'e' DaQub/, I really am wondering 
about that sentence, not any English sentence.  I'm sorry if my 
presentation made it seem that way.

> Of course, I'd just say {'Iv qIp yaS?  yIngu'!}

This assumes that the person you're addressing *knows* who the officer is, 
and you want him to tell you.  What if you're asking an opinion?  Who do 
you think it was?   I suspect charghwI' would suggest /'Iv qIp yaS?  vuDlIj 
HInob/ or something like that.  What do you want to eat?  Somehow /nuq 
DaSop DaneH/ doesn't feel quite right, though that's what I've been saying.

> --
> SuStel
> Beginners' Grammarian
> Stardate 96922.5

--Holtej
Stardate 96922.75

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