tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 03 20:25:41 1997

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Re: plans

On Sun, 2 Nov 1997 19:34:58 -0800 (PST) [email protected] wrote:

> In a message dated 97-11-02 12:23:03 EST, ~mark replies to peHruS:
> 
> << Careful.  I maintain that Klingon question words are not relative clause
>  markers (what do you think -bogh is for anyway?),  >>
> 
> peHruS jIH
> 
> jIHvaD bIjangchu'mo', qatlho', ~mark
> 
> As I have been pointing out recently, I am supporting the concept of using
> {'e'} to link two separate sentences.  I will be very careful not to claim
> that question words are relative clause markers.

It doesn't matter what you CLAIM they are, you happen to be 
USING them as relative clauses. It doesn't even matter if you 
don't even recognize that you are using them as relative 
clauses. You are.

The questions in your Question As Object constructions have an 
answer represented by the question word 'Iv, or nuq. That answer 
is the real object of your second sentence in your Question As 
Object construction. Note that this is exactly what a head noun 
in a relative clause does.

The noun is the real object of this second verb. The rest of the 
question merely gives more identification information for that 
noun. That is exactly what a relative clause does for the head 
noun.

We can take a classic example of a relative clause:

puq QIpbogh yaS'e' vISov.

"I know the officer who hit the child." What do I know? I know 
the officer. Which officer? The one who hit the child. Hitting 
functions only to describe or help identify the particular 
officer I know. This is what relative clauses do.

Now, twist it into your Question as Object construction:

puq QIpbogh 'Iv? 'e' vISov.

"Who hit the child? I know that." [Note that this sounds a 
little strange because you don't really know "that". What you 
know is the ANSWER to that. Still, the thing you know is the 
officer. All the process of hitting is doing is helping to 
identify the officer.

Now, contrast it with a REAL Sentence As Object construction:

puq QIp yaS 'e' vISov.

"I know that the officer hit the child." Note that here, the 
object of "know" is not the officer. It is the fact that the 
officer hit the child. The action of the verb is as much a part 
of what is known as is anyone involved in the action. The whole 
sentence is the object of the second verb. This is Sentence As 
Object and it is fundamentally different from your proposed 
Question As Object.

And before you head off into the question words that do not 
represent nouns, note that the way you've been using them still 
boils down to a noun as object:

chay' Duj chenmoHlu'? 'e' vISov.

"How is a ship built? I know that"

Again, note how strange this sounds, because again, you don't 
know "that". You know the ANSWER to "that". What you really mean 
here is that you know the METHOD or PROCESS of shipbuilding. It 
is still more of an attempt to build a relative clause than to 
build a real Sentence As Object. The object is not the sentence, 
it is the RESPONSE to the question, the ANSWER to the question 
that is the object of the second verb. This is fundamentally 
DIFFERENT from what the Sentence As Object was built to do.
 
> KGT's answer to "which one" clearly helps us, but in another area.

Exactly. That is different altogether. That is merely proving I 
was right in a DIFFERENT argument! Meanwhile, I happen to be 
right in THIS one, TOO. reH lugh charghwI' net Sov!

Well, in the interest of humility, I have not always been right, 
but I'm usually right. I was wrong about {Hoch} as a 
number/adjective for another noun. Still, given the number of 
things I've been right about the odds that arguing against me on 
this one will have much of a chance of surviving in the long 
haul are probably not that good.

I'm convinced that the only reason for accepting the idea of 
Question As Object is the non-reason of not really thinking this 
through all that much. If you DO think it through, you'll see 
that it really is a badly aimed attempt at building a relative 
clause through the wrong grammatical construction.
 
> mangachchuqtaHmo' SachtaH Sovmaj

qar. mangachchuqpu'mo' DaH jIlughchu' 'e' vISovbej!
 
> chaq nuQoy MO 'ej maHvaD Hoch QIjchu' ghaH

I feel certain that Okrand's hesitance to speak on this one is 
that he does not want to shut off the potential that someone 
might come up with a form of Question that would be appropriate 
as an object of a Sentence As Object. Meanwhile, I'm certain 
that he would see that all the ones presented so far are simply 
veiled attempts to build relative clauses through other means 
and he would not approve.
 
> peHruS

charghwI'

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