tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Nov 06 19:26:29 1997
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Question-Relative Clause
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Question-Relative Clause
- Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 22:26:13 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
- Priority: NORMAL
On Thu, 6 Nov 1997 10:58:04 -0800 (PST) Scott Murphy
<[email protected]> wrote:
> It is good to debate these grammatical issues, but perhaps not good to
> infuse them with such emotion.
Agreed. That is precisely why I apologized for my excessive
emotion. It did not clarify the debate.
> 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.
qarqu'.
> I'm not here to discuss adding new things to Okrand's
> creation, only to discuss, debate and practice using it.
maj.
> >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.
Good point. In Russian, expressing this as a relative clause
would sound ridiculous. It has to be expressed as
Sentence-As-Object. In English, there really isn't any
equivalent to a relative clause, except through the use
of relative pronouns, which don't exist in Klingon. Meanwhile,
an English relative clause sounds a lot like a question. It can
be subject or object of the main verb:
1. I don't know who hit the captain.
2. The man who hit the captain does not know me.
The first of these two examples is best expressed:
HoD qIpbogh nuv'e' vISovbe'.
You'd like to express it as:
HoD qIp 'Iv? 'e' vISovbe'.
The second example is best expressed:
muSovbe' HoD qIpbogh nuv'e'.
Meanwhile, there is no way to express it by your preferred
construction because there is no Sentence As Subject
construction. Meanwhile, there should be no problem sliding
between these two examples with similar grammatical
constructions. Relative clauses win here. Arguments against this
perspective are really quite weak.
Your example is a better argument for your case because the
question word you choose acts as an adverbial rather than as a
pronoun, so it is not so obviously posing as a relative pronoun.
Also, "How" was not listed in the relative pronouns expressed in
TKD in the section on relative clauses.
At this point, I wish you had included your original Klingon
example so I could be more sure I'm not corrupting it toward
strengthening my own argument. Instead, I have to back-translate:
They don't know how it happened.
I'll replace "it" with "this event" just to make it a bit less
vague. By your grammar, it would be:
chay' qaS wanI'vam? 'e' luSovbe'.
It has been pointed out that "How" can ask two different kinds
of things. It can mean "by what method?" or it can mean "in what
manner". "How did you get in here?" can be answered either by "I
walked in through the door," or by, "Very slowly."
Meanwhile, I'm relatively certain that all canon examples of
{chay'} have thus far referred exclusively to the "by what
method" meaning. I have not noticed any such questions answered
by an adverbial.
So, if you are asking, "by what method?" in this kind of
construction, it has the same weakness as other Question As
Object constructions in that the {'e'} is not representing the
question, but instead represents the ANSWER to the question,
which is the method, which is a single noun which is identified
by or described by the remainder of the question. In other
words, it is still a relative clause.
In a real Sentence As Object, the object is the whole sentence,
not just a noun extracted from the sentence and described by
that sentence. The sentence is the object of the second verb. It
is not merely a descriptor of the noun object of that verb.
> 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."
This is precisely what I've been saying. The head noun is the
one word which functions in both the main clause and the
relative clause. The relative clause describes or identifies the
head noun. The main clause treats the head noun as if it were
just a noun with the rest of the relative clause wrapped around
it like an adjective.
> 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.
This is true unless you unfold the word "how" into its elemental
meaning here. "How this event happened" really means "The cause
of this event". The noun acting as object of the main clause is
"cause". The question you pose is really a relative clause with
"cause" as its head noun. It merely describes or identifies the
cause they don't know.
> 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.
You still have not shown that you EVER intended for the entire
question to be represented by {'e'} the way entire sentences are
represented by it in a real Sentence As Object construction.
This is the grammatical function you have never addressed. I
cannot buy your argument until you address this failure of your
attempted grammar.
> >There IS no defense for this.
>
> It would be easier to understand your argument if you provided reasoning
> behind such statements.
I will repeat my reasoning. Sentence As Object uses the entire
first sentence as the object of the second verb. The first
sentence does not merely describe a noun, which is then acting
as the object of the second verb. That would be a relative
clause and nothing but a relative clause. What you are doing is
functionally identical to a relative clause and functionally
different from a Sentence As Object.
Am I getting through yet?
> >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.
Four words. Your grammar uses four words as well.
> >"They did not know that how had this happened?"
>
> The insertion of "that" is not always implied by the use of 'e'.
While there can be wordings that do not use "that", it is never
the case that a Sentence As Object cannot be cleanly translated
with "that".
> An
> example from TKD: yaS qIppu' 'e' vIlegh = I saw him/her hit the officers.
This is equally well translated as "I saw that he hit the
officers." More accurately, "I saw that he had hit the
officers", but the example was probably written back when Okrand
used {-pu'} for past tense before he decided not to use tense
and use aspect instead...
> Also the order of "had this" is not implied by the Klingon.
Yes it was. That is the wording it would have in a question. You
chose to use a question. I'm pointing out how awkward the
wording is when you really try to pack a question into the
grammar of a Sentence As Object. "X 'e' Y" become "Y that X".
The full wording of the question should be translated instead of
fudging things around so it sounds like a relative clause, which
is exactly what you are doing.
> So a more
> accurate translation would read: "They did not know how this had
> happened."
It is accurate to the English meaning you intended, but it is
not at all accurate to the Klingon you were presenting. {chay'
qaSpu'} means, "How had this happened?" That is a question. It
does not mean "How this had happened." That is a relative
clause. There is no justification for mistranslating a question
as a relative clause.
> 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.
Well, you picked this detail out of nowhere. Yes, when you use a
sentence in its entirety in its original form as object of
another verb, that verb is quite commonly "know" or "see".
Meanwhile that is not what you are doing. You are fudging a few
words around in the translation and magically transmogrifying a
question into a relative clause and expressing it through the
wrong grammatical construction.
> ******************************
> * Scott Murphy *
> * University of Kentucky *
> * email: [email protected] *
> ******************************
>
charghwI'