tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 02 09:11:54 1997
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: plans
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Date: Sat, 18 Oct 1997 21:36:44 -0700 (PDT)
>From: [email protected]
>
>Is your answer of the question of muHwI' without challenging his grammatical
>construction a sanction of this construction? muHwI' wrote:
>
>chay' tlhIngan Duj chenlu' 'e' vIbej vIneH
>
>HoD Qanqor and I have used this construction, but some, including SuStel and
>~mark, have claimed it is not correct. They have stated that {chay'} and
>other Klingon question words are not relative clause markers. I still think
>that we only need to look at the above as two separate sentences, the first
>being a question.
Careful. I maintain that Klingon question words are not relative clause
markers (what do you think -bogh is for anyway?), yes, but that doesn't
preclude constructions that SEEM like relative clause-markers in English.
To me, and to Krankor, for that matter (we've discussed this) something
like "?'Iv Dalegh 'e' vISovbe'" *could* mean "I don't know who you saw",
but NOT because 'Iv is a relative clause marker. Rather, it is two
sentences, the first being a question, even as you say, but a rhetorical
one: "Whom did you see? I don't know that." This translates most smoothly
into English as "I don't know whom you saw," but that does NOT mean that
'Iv is a relative marker. It's a question-word, used as one, rhetorically
if you like (in that it doesn't expect an answer). This is not precisely
the same thing; there are examples where expecting question-words to behave
like relative markers will not work. In order to make this clear, I like
to punctuate uses like this as "?'Iv Daleghpu'? 'e' vISovbe'" making it
very clear that the 'Iv is still a question-word.
THIS is the use that Qanqor espouses, and I rather like it myself. I don't
recall SuStel's position, but I do recall that charghwI' doesn't like it at
all. And of course there's some logic to that. After all, it is rather
strange. And one could say that 'e' is being stretched a little. It's
more like "Whom did you see? I don't know THE ANSWER to that"; can we
expect that extra meaning from 'e'? I'm willing to buy it, charghwI'
isn't, and I can see his point of view. Moreover, charghwI', l'Ta`ameihh
(an Aramaic word used in the Talmud which just plain makes sense here),
considers this sort of question insufficiently direct and a good candidate
for recasting, as in the "Duj Dalegh yIngu'!" usage, which has, truth be
told, been supported by canon in KGT. I'm not sure recasting will be
general enough, but it remains to be seen.
~mark
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.4, an Emacs/PGP interface
iQB1AwUBNFy0VcppGeTJXWZ9AQHzFQL/csSu4NZjegXJSsXeWyhn+bVgRVGNm3X4
45mehSYWzYDeb07hT+CH5HjZNvl9NdYs2xMbIZ5PkgWuv4/Qy2S2DUMsDWwm7637
wRa1d9IFtjyZlzGd18TGgjdNum6glUwk
=ttEJ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----