tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jul 05 16:08:20 1996
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Re: "Where do you want to sit?"
- From: Will Martin <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: "Where do you want to sit?"
- Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1996 19:08:17 -0400 ()
- Priority: NORMAL
On Mon, 1 Jul 1996 09:56:40 -0700 "Mark J. Reed"
<[email protected]> wrote:
> This weekend my {be'nal} and I were at a restaurant, and I wanted to
> ask her where she wanted to sit. The first phrasing that came to mind
> raised a question. If {neH} were a "normal" verb in that it took {'e'},
> I would use this:
>
> maba' nuqDaq 'e' DaneH?
>
> But since {neH} doesn't take {'e'} - do you just
> drop the {'e'} above and get {maba' nuqDaq DaneH}, or would it become
> {nuqDaq maba' DaneH}?
Dajqu'! Clearly, we don't have canon to touch this. It
forces me to consider exactly what this means in English,
which is one of my main fascinations with Klingon, anyway:
the way it departs from English in enough areas to force
an English speaker to reconsider that which would otherwise
be ignored.
Where do you want us to sit? The "Where" refers to the
place where we perform the act of sitting, not to the place
where you perform the act of wanting. Your choice of
{maba' nuqDaq 'e' DaneH} would probably mean "Where are you
wanting that we sit," or more specifically, "Where are you
while you are wanting us to sit?"
This is one of those questions I would personally turn into
a command:
quSmeymaj yIwIv!
> This is probably a bad casting of the question anyway, but the point is:
> are sentences with {neH} still sentence-as-object, or single sentences,
> where placement of adverbials is concerned?
I think that the adverbial should apply to the first verb,
not {neH}, unless it applies to the act of desiring rather
than to the act described by the first verb. Like:
Hmmm. Examples are harder to come up with than I thought.
Okay:
Soj QaQ vIleghDI' QIt vISop SIbI' vIneH.
Dayaj'a'?
> -marqoS
charghwI'