tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Nov 06 10:48:17 1997
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Question-Relative Clause
It is good to debate these grammatical issues, but perhaps not good to
infuse them with such emotion. My intention was not to imply that a "new"
grammatical construction should be made a part of the language. In
mentioning the possible emergence of dialect in tlhIngan Hol, I only
wanted to give the die-hard "questions are not sentences" people a way to
deal with this issue WITHOUT getting so emotional about it. It seems that
my effort failed. I'm not here to discuss adding new things to Okrand's
creation, only to discuss, debate and practice using it.
>I disagree. This might be a normal way of thinking for English speakers,
>but that doesn't prove that all languages work this way.
OK. Let's look at a language which works differently. In Russian, to say
"They don't know how it happened," we say "Oni ne zna'ut, kak eto
sluchilos'." This is NOT a relative clause construction, but rather a
sentence-as-object construction. "Oni ne zna'ut" means "they don't know".
The comma delineates the sentence "Kak eto sluchilos' = How did this
happen" as being the object of the verb "zna'ut". In Russian, relative
clauses are NOT marked by question words, but rather by the adjective
"kotorii". We could say, instead, "Oni ne zna'ut prichinu, kotora'a eto
prichinala sluchilot's'a." This roughly translates as "The don't know the
cause, which causes this to happen." It can be said, but it sounds
ridiculous.
This being said, I wish to point out (as others have) that nowhere in TKD
does it say that questions cannot serve as objects of 'e'. In fact, in
the section on relative clauses, TKD states "Relative clauses are
translated into English as phrases beginning with who, which, where, and,
most commonly, that. Like adjectives, they describe nouns: the dog which
is running, the cat that is sleeping, the child who is playing, the
restaurant where we ate. The noun modified by a relative clause is the
head noun." The sentence "They don't know how this happened," does not
contain a relative clause. In fact, it doesn't even contain a noun which
would serve as the head noun. The subject is "they". The object is "how
this hapopened". The verb is "don't know". Until we either see an
example in canon of a sentence like this, or get an explanation from
Okrand. The question IS still open for debate.
>There IS no defense for this.
It would be easier to understand your argument if you provided reasoning
behind such statements.
>wanI'vam qaSmoHpu'bogh ghu''e' luSovbe'
event-this happen-cause-perfective-which situation-topic
they/it-understand-not.
Hmmm...They don't understand the situation which caused this event.
It sounds great. Excellent! But it seems a little wordy.
>"They did not know that how had this happened?"
The insertion of "that" is not always implied by the use of 'e'. An
example from TKD: yaS qIppu' 'e' vIlegh = I saw him/her hit the officers.
Also the order of "had this" is not implied by the Klingon. So a more
accurate translation would read: "They did not know how this had
happened." Which is exactly what I was trying to say. Notice also that
TKD says that 'e' is often used with verbs such as" know", "see". The
verb I used was "know". It seems to fit TKD's criteria.
******************************
* Scott Murphy *
* University of Kentucky *
* email: [email protected] *
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