tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Dec 07 22:03:11 1997

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Re: Question as object

I deleted my last two responses to this thread before sending 
them because I hoped it would just die on its own. No such luck. 
loQ jIrop, jIDoy' 'ej muloS wejvatlh chorghmaH wej QID 
vIlaDbe'pu'bogh, 'ach jIjang 'e' vImevlaHbe'.

On Fri, 5 Dec 1997 10:17:24 -0800 (PST) "Mark E. Shoulson" 
<[email protected]> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> 
> >Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 20:51:42 -0800 (PST)
> >From: Alan Anderson <[email protected]>
> >
> >ja' ~mark:
> >>..."The lieutenant learned what fueled the ship."  It's not "the
> >>captain learned the substance that fueled the ship".  If the substance is
> >>stale kevas, how do you learn kevas?  You learn the identity of the
> >>substance, which is not the same thing.

SoghvaD nIn'e' poQbogh Duj 'anglu'.

An "indirect question" is not a grammatical structure addressed 
by the Klingon langauge. No reference exists for it in TKD or 
anywhere else in canon. No examples exist in canon. Indirect 
speech in general is not supported, as you, ~mark, were first to 
point out.

> >>Is there an answer to this that doesn't require QAO?  

See above example.

> >>Maybe.  But it is NOT
> >>as simple as you are making it out to be: an ordinary relative clause
> >>doesn't cut it.

Oh it doesn't, doesn't it? So what is wrong with the above 
attempt?

> >I'd never heard of indirect questions before this discussion, and until I
> >saw this example I wasn't convinced that they were inherent in an idea as
> >opposed to its expression in a particular language.  Now I find I have to
> >agree that "He learned what fueled the ship" doesn't work with a relative
> >clause if it's translated anything close to directly.

Well, since we don't have a verb for "fueled" and since this 
wording feels a little awkward in the original English, I agree 
that a direct translation is unlikely to make much sense. In 
fact, I doubt a direct translation is remotely possible. We have 
to cast this for meaning, not "direct translation", whatever 
that is.
 
> Thank you.  I *had* heard of them, but had forgotten them and never fully
> appreciated the distinction until I thought about them during this
> discussion.  I am glad I was able to communicate their importance, and that
> I managed to convince some of you not to sweep them under the rug.

Why, oh WHY can't we just sweep it under the rug? It isn't 
necessary and it doesn't work.
 
> >This example is unlike the ones that I've complained about.  The object of
> >the second sentence is *not* a simple noun identified by what looks like a
> >question word.  In this case, the object indeed is a complete sentence.
> >The whole construction still isn't a real question, but there is an implied
> >answer.  Its sort of "He learned [the answer to] 'what fueled the ship?'"
> 
> Right.  That was Krankor's contention all along, that QAO meant "I know
> [the answer to] that."  He just never really couched it in terms of
> indirect questions or drew the distinction between them and relative
> clauses.

Meanwhile, there is only one use of the pronoun {'e'} given to 
us and you and Krankor are trying to make up a new one. It is 
supposed to represent THE PREVIOUS SENTENCE. Not a noun from the 
previous sentence. Not a closely related other sentence. The 
previous sentence itself alone can be represented by {'e'}. 
Until Okrand tells us {'e'} can represent something other than 
the previous sentence itself, there is no justification 
whatsoever for what you are calling an "indirect question".
 
> The distinction is subtle and common, and because it's not drawn in English
> it's easy to miss.  That's part of why this discussion was so protracted.
> In a sentence like "I saw who was standing there," the difference between
> the relative clause meaning and the indirect question is very small and
> subtle, so it's easy to dismiss it.  But it is there, and is much more
> pronounced in other sentences.  

So humor me. What IS the difference? Perhaps I'm just mentally 
dull here and am missing something you see clearly, but you 
don't seem to actually point out the difference. You just say 
that there IS a difference, mysterious and subtle though it may 
be, and somehow Klingon needs to handle that subtle, mysterious 
difference in a particular way or you won't be happy.

> So I'd say you should still use the
> relative clause only when that's the meaning you want, and the indirect
> question method (whatever it is) when the meaning you need is "I saw who it
> was who was standing there."  Because so many of the examples are subtle
> like this, it isn't always easy to see the difference.

So, this bug in your bonnet is essentially the difference 
between, "I saw who it was who was standing there," and "I saw 
the person who was standing there." Well, I, for one, will be 
quite content if Klingon does not distinguish between these 
meanings. 

Meanwhile, neither of these are questions. What you are calling 
an indirect question ("who it was who was standing there") 
sounds to me like a redundantly nested relative clause born out 
of a need to use the verb "to be". I saw the person. I saw the 
person who was standing there. I saw the person who it was. I 
saw the person who it was who was standing there.

Vague, wittering and indecisive.
 
> There are a few notable examples to poke at.  "I know how to fix the
> computer": what is the difference between the two meanings?  Use the
> Klingon recasting of "I know the method [to use] in order to repair the
> computer" for the relative clause meaning.  The difference is so small
> here it may not exist at all.  I suppose I could say that I could know the
> method in broad strokes, and thus know what the method is without knowing
> the method, but that's not completely true: I still DO know the method,
> just not very well.  This one, perhaps, really should be translated only as


> one or the other (probably relative clause), or perhaps as either
> interchangeably.

Or perhaps we are hung up on an idiom here. De'wI'mey 
vItI'laHchu'. This whole "how" concept is unnecessary to get 
this meaning communicated. To add "method" to it suggests that 
you are talking about a single procedure for a single kind of 
problem. There are many elements of the language to handle the 
subtle differences between meanings here in terms of how certain 
you are that you can repair them, how often you can repair them 
with that level of certainty or how many different types of 
computers you can apply this skill toward. The language is quite 
versatile in these regards, which strike me as much more useful 
than this "difference" you are so concerned about here.

> Then there's my other favorite of "I know whether the captain died."

HoD yIn Dotlh vISov.

> Someone suggested that "Heghpu'chugh HoD ['e'/ngoDvetlh] vISov" wasn't too
> bad: if the captain has died, I know it.  I maintain it isn't enough.

I agree that it is not that strong a translation. I think 
{Dotlh} is a very useful word for most if not all of these 
"whether" examples.

> Because the claim is that not only do I know that the captain died if he
> died, but I also know that he *didn't* die if he didn't.  The above Klingon
> sentence is silent about what I know in the case that the captain didn't
> die, but the indirect question meaning isn't.  I'd be pretty happy with
> "Heghpu''a' HoD? 'e' vISov" for that.

Meanwhile, you are using {'e'} for something quite different 
than that which we are told is its sole function. You are using 
it for something other than to represent the previous sentence. 
You don't know the question. You know the answer to the 
question. {'e'} is representing the answer to the question, but 
the previous sentence is not the answer to the question. It is 
the question. Just use {Dotlh}. It is simple and it works. 
People will understand you if you use {Dotlh}. I, for one, will 
not understand you if you use {'e'} to represent a sentence 
closely related to the previous sentence, but not actually the 
previous sentence itself.
 
> >I'm still going to try to avoid using questions as objects.  They might
> >have their place, but it's a "fence-around-the-law" kind of thing.  If I
> >start sprinkling {ghItlh qonta' 'Iv 'e' lughoj} and the like through my
> >writings, it might give people the erroneous impression that I accept the
> >superficially similar {ghItlh qonta' 'Iv 'e' lughov} -- which I do not. :-P

I find it absolutely amazing that you can accept one and reject 
the other. They are both gibberish.
 
> Which is why I make sure to punctuate it as a "rhetorical" question, to
> drive the point home that I'm not using a relative clause.  It's better
> than nothing.  If QAO is the way to go, we must be very careful to make
> sure that people recognize the difference between it and relative clauses.

The difference is that relative clauses are explained in TKD, we 
have examples of them in canon, they make sense and everyone 
understands them, while indirect questions are not addressed at 
all in TKD, there are no canon examples whatsoever, they don't 
make sense and many of us do not understand what they are 
supposed to mean. Note that when I translate into Klingon what 
you seek to express as you explain in English, I usually don't 
use either relative clauses or indirect questions. I agree that 
your examples don't generally work well with relative clauses, 
but just because you've found meanings which overstretch the 
function of a relative cluase doesn't mean that some other valid 
Klingon grammar can't carry those examples. Indirect questions 
are not valid.
 
> It is certainly the case that we don't know for sure how indirect questions
> are handled in Klingon.  We have no canon, and there are many possibilities
> out there.  I would be extremely surprised if they were treated as relative
> clauses, and I think you would be too.  The more I think about it, the more
> I like QAO constructions, to the extent that I would be mildly surprised if
> they were *not* the right answer.  

This would, of course, require us to change the definition of 
{'e'}. You don't seem to have ever acknowledged that.

> But only mildly; there certainly is room
> for all sorts of other answers.  QAO seems to solve the problem neatly and
> elegantly, within the grammar, and flexibly enough for just about any
> situation.  

Not really. It misuses {'e'}, which bothers me a lot more than 
it bothers you and Krankor, obviously, but then I was also more 
sensitive to misuse of {-ghach} before that was clarified. Just 
because you see a quick and easy method to mass-translate 
English words into Klingon words without a lot of thought 
doesn't mean it would actually serve to convey ideas well within 
the structure of the language. Indirect questions violate the 
current structure of the language by changing the definition of 
{'e'}, which is severely and explicitly and intentionally 
limited by Okrand in TKD. Just because you want it to also mean 
"the answer to the previous question" instead of "the previous 
sentence itself" doesn't make it so.

> Other answers I could think of tend to be more restrictive.  Of
> course, Okrand can invent a whole new class of words or constructions I
> can't even guess at.  Occam's razor, to my mind, supports QAO, but that's
> no proof; languages don't behave that rationally.

I don't think rational behavior has much to do with indirect 
questions. Perhaps there is a connection somewhere there that 
I'm not seeing.
 
> ~mark

charghwI'

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