tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Apr 12 18:38:26 1997

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RE: question without question word or suffix

jatlh qoror:

> 	qoror here.  SuStelvaD:  Do you remember our discussion over my sentence
> "maHmo' He'qu' qach?" a while back and whether one could tell it was a 
question?
> (By the way, you were right about <He'So'>-- I didn't see it.)  I just 
re-heard
> PK and noticed a sentence that works *exactly* the same way:
> 	pu'HIchwIj Daleghpu'?
> 	Have you seen my phaser pistol?
> 
> 	No suffix or question word, but the meaning comes through fine.  What do
> you think?

I think it's an error.  I already knew about this sentence, and it is not 
inflected like a question.  Not that I hear many native-spoken questions, but 
Okrand usually sounds pretty clear about that.

Besides, if you *could* do this with yes/no questions, what would be the point 
of {-'a'}?  It would become absolutely useless.  Since it *is* used, I 
conclude that this is an error.

If you want to use this sentence as evidence that you can say yes/no questions 
without {-'a'}, I guess I can't stop you.  Unless I get such information from 
Okrand explicitly, I'm not going to tell anyone that it's all right.

-- 
SuStel
Beginners' Grammarian
Stardate 97281.2

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