tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Dec 09 19:18:06 1997

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Re: Question as object



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>Date: Sun, 7 Dec 1997 22:45:58 -0800 (PST)
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>
>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'.

tlhoS QInmey vIlaD 'e' vIrInmoH.  *Ireland* vIcheghDI', muloS cha'SanID
jabbI'IDmey.  DaH muloS cha'vatlh. (less, actually).  tugh (rInDI' Qu')
Qu'vam vIqel 'ej vIDel.

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

Indirect speech and indirect questions are related only in the words used
to name them in English.

>> >>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?

Nothing.  But it's not as simple as one would expect, in that you had to
change the verb.  Like I said, QAO isn't the only answer, but blind use of
relative clauses (because they look like relative clauses in English) isn't
either.  I notice you missed on the concept of "learning", replacing it
with "was revealed."  If those concepts are really interchangeable, how
come we have both verbs?

>> 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.

Because *something* IS necessary and frankly from where I stand QAO looks
like the best candidate.  NOT the only one, mind you, but the objections to
it are looking weaker and weaker to me.  There are other ways out there,
I'm sure, and you're finding at least some of them.  Which is right?  Not
sure about that one.

>> >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 strongest argument I saw against QAO was that it seemed to behave like
it was referring to a single noun from the previous sentence, and not the
sentence as a whole.  This is NOT the case.  That it refers to, as you put
it, "a closely related" sentence does not trouble me as it does you, since
the sentence is *awfully* closely related.  Close enough that in a logical
sense, they are equivalent.  "I heard who killed the emperor" and "I heard
that Worf killed the emperor," in that the "who" in the first sentence
refers to the Worf in the second (assuming it was Worf, that is).  It would
NOT be accurate to say "I heard Worf" (since that may not be true).  What I
heard, what the first sentence has as its object, is "that it was Worf who
killed the Emperor".  A *full sentence*, and one logically equivalent to
the one used.

Is that a stretch?  From the question to the answer?  Probably.  I contend
that the stretch involved is sufficiently minimal that I would expect it to
happen.  In my very first answer on this thread that "stretch" is what I
thought people had a problem with, and now I see it's pretty much all there
is left of the problem.  Owing to the logical equivalence of the sentences
being so used, I'm not sure it is much of a stretch.  I can, however, see
why one might consider it one, so as I said, I'm still open to the
possibility that there are other answers.

>> 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.

OK, the difference:

"I saw who was standing there" = I saw the person who was standing there =
I saw Bob (assuming Bob was the person in question).  This is the relative
clause meaning.  It says nothing more and nothing less than "I saw Bob",
incidentally providing some other description of Bob.  Owing to the
tenselessness of Klingon, for all we know I might have seen Bob three days
after he was standing there, and only used his standing there at a
different time as identification. (NOTE: this is irrelevant to the question
of whether -bogh can or cannot be used non-restrictively.  The use here is
restrictive, despite my comment about "incidental identification", and I
think everyone agrees with restrictive -bogh).

"I saw who was standing there" = I saw who it was who was standing there =
I saw that Bob was standing there.  Here, the claim that photons from Bob
hit my eyes, while being made, is incidental to the claim.  What I'm really
claiming is that I saw the whole event of the standing, including the
identity of the stander.  If you will, it's saying "pa' Qam Bob'e' 'e'
vIlegh."  I saw that it was Bob who was standing there.

These two sentences are a particularly poor example of the distinction (as
I said above), because in both cases we have photons from Bob hitting my
eye.  "I heard who killed the Emperor" is a clearer example, in that the
relative clause meaning has me hearing sounds generated by the murderer,
but the indirect question meaning has me hearing that it was Worf who
killed.

>> 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. 

The meanings are extremely different.  My point was that the particular
sentence of seeing who was standing there is a very poor example precisely
because the difference is so small and subtle in that case, as I said.  I
would be *very* surprised if Klingon stretched the meaning of a relative
clause to the extent that {ta' chotbogh ghot'e' vIQoy} means something
other than hearing the person who killed the emperor.

>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.

Not in the least.  This time it's you who's being misled by terminology.
Indirect questions *are*, they exist in languages.  A language needs to be
able to say what they say.  I'd be mighty surprised to find a language
(least of all Klingon) that couldn't say "I saw who it was who was standing
there"  Note that this is NOT the same as your iterated relative clauses.
Replace "saw" with "heard" and you'll see what I mean (I keep saying, "I
saw who was standing there" is a BAD example).  Does the language HAVE to
use question-form methods to express it?  Not at all.  But {pa' Qambogh
ghot'e' vIlegh} isn't going to cut it either (because of the better example
of {ta' chotbogh ghot'e' vIQoy}).

>> 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.

OK, then how about "The book describes how to fix computers"?  You can't
fall back on that idiom.  Personally, I'm in favor of "De'wI' tI'meH mIw
Del paq" (as I imagine you would be) -- note that number of methods doesn't
matter, since Klingon doesn't mark number mandatorily.  Like I said, the
indirect question "difference" is so small it may not actually exist in
this case.  A normal -meH (or possibly -bogh) clause works just fine.

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

Aha, you couldn't use -bogh or -chugh, could you?  There IS an indirect
question here, and you chose to express it by bringing in the extra noun
"Dotlh."  It's not a bad answer, by any stretch.  I hadn't thought of it,
but it works.  It isn't very general, though.  What about "The commander
will judge whether the Ferengi needs to give 200 Darseks to the merchant
because he broke the vase"?  (I bet if I'd worded it as "I judged..." as I
had originally planned you'd just say "well, say what you judged and have
done."  But I didn't).  I can't see a good place to put {Dotlh} or a
related noun to handle that.  And note that I want {noH} there, or
SOMEthing that gets across the judging.

I think I can think of a way, but it involves saying the same thing twice.

>> 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.

Try the above.  Be warned that if you get it, I'll probably come up with a
trickier one.

>> >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.

One is "they learn who it was who wrote the manuscipt" (they learned his
identity) and one is "they recognize the person who wrote the manuscript",
which were better done as a relative clause.

>> 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.

Indirect questions simply *are*.  Whether or not they are translated using
a question-form or whatever isn't really relevant.  You might as well say
that instruments do not exist in Klingon.  They do, but they are expressed
using purpose clauses ({verengan vIHoHmeH taj vIlo'}).  That doesn't mean
you can't express an instrument, it means you have to do it using the
Klingon method of purpose clauses.  You have to express indirect questions
SOMEhow, the question is how.

>> 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.

I meant that by Occam's razor, I'd expect QAO to be right, that it seems
the most rational and logical answer to me.  My own perception.  However,
rationality and logic have little to do with how a language will choose to
do things, so that perspective, even if it were not personal and
subjective, doesn't mean very much,

~mark

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