tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 20 09:28:22 1997
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Re: The {nuq} of Earl
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: The {nuq} of Earl
- Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 12:28:10 -0500 (EST)
- In-reply-to: <[email protected]> (message from ThorntonRose on Sun, 19 Jan 1997 10:20:46 -0800)
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>Date: Sun, 19 Jan 1997 10:20:46 -0800
>From: Thornton Rose <[email protected]>
>
>> nuq what? (ques)
>>
>>and in "6.4. Questions" says
>>
>> For 'Iv "who?" and nuq "what?" the question word fits into the
>> sentence in the position that would be occupied by the answer.
>
>To this, ~mark responded:
>
>>Indeed. Which would imply that "nuq Dargh DaneH" is asking "What's tea do
>>you want?" or "You want the tea of what?" Not quite what you mean either.
>
>Yes, this is not quite what I mean. However, it leads me to some questions:
>
>1. If {nuq Dargh ...} can be interpeted as "what's tea ..." or "tea of
>what...", does this imply that {nuq Dargh} works like a noun-noun construction,
>even though it is a pronoun-noun construction, and, if so, could {SoH Dargh} be
>interpreted as "your tea" or "tea of you"?
Yes it does, and no it doesn't, in order.
I do believe (with no canon support, mind you), that "nuq" and "'Iv" can
participate in noun-noun constructions, replacing a noun. However, you
can't say "*SoH Dargh" for "your tea" even though that would seem logical,
because we are explicitly told that it doesn't work that way. The
Dictionary specifically says that for the pronouns for which suffixes
exist, you use the type-4 noun suffixes, and not the noun-noun
construction.
>2. Is {nuq Dargh DaneH?} improper because we know that we cannot use {nuq} in
>this way (i.e. like "what/which" in English), or because we don't have any canon
>that shows us that we can use it in this way?
I suspect the latter. We are not TOLD that "nuq does not mean which of a
set" (if we were we probably would be told what if anything does). The
canon is merely silent on the matter.
Actually, this is not completely true. Okrand *has* come out and said that
to ask "which one" you want, the way to do it is to make it a command and
use "Dargh DaneHbogh yIngu'". So in that sense we do have canon support
for not using it and thus implied canon against it.
>3. I received {majQa'} from SuStel for recasting the question as {Dargh Segh
>yIwIv.}. But, if I really want to ask, could I ask {Dargh DaneHbogh 'oH nuq'e'?}?
Probably... it would mean "what is the tea you want?" which is sort of
stilted and not completely the question you wanted to ask.
>4. Suppose I want to be very sarcastic with another warrior (dangerous, I know)
>and really want to do it in the form of a question, how would I say "What is
>the temperature of your blood?"? {'IwlIj Hat 'oH nuq'e'?}, perhaps?
It sounds better to me to order it as "nuq 'oH 'IwlIj Hat'e'", but that's
neither here nor there. I would accept this phrasing.
~mark
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