tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jun 24 22:15:46 1997

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question words (was Re: MUSH)



ja' peHruS:
>Let's use English:
>
>Why are you going?   I don't why you are going.
>What are you cooking?  I see what you are cooking.
>How do you store tribbles?  The man knows how you store tribbles.
>
>tlhIngan Hol is not Terran.  It is not like anything Terran.  Still, how can
>we presuppose that we cannot use question words this way?  I await your
>debate.

The quick answer involves your second English example above.  Klingon does
not use pronouns like "what" to indicate relative clauses; it uses a verb
suffix.

The long answer extrapolates from the {-bogh} precedent and the lack of
pronouns in the lexicon meaning "why" or "how".  We can easily rephrase
these ideas to use the nouns "reason" and "procedure".  It's better to
do things that we know are correct than to assume that question words
like {qatlh} and {chay'} can be used as pronouns.




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