tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Nov 06 19:26:30 1997

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Re: Question as object

On Wed, 5 Nov 1997 23:48:04 -0800 (PST) [email protected] wrote:

> What a lot of reader's of Klingon grammar rules as laid out in TKD 6.2.5
> appear to be overlooking is that we do not have to be concerned with what
> type of sentence is used as the object when referred to by {'e'}.  The
> section clearly points out that a whole "sentence" is the object.  We do not
> have to consider what words make up that sentence.

Fine. Let's accept this approach and look at what happens to it. 
Take the sentence {'Iv HoH HoD?} Note that it is a question. It 
translates as "Who did the captain kill?" but you say we don't 
need to worry about that. The wording is unimportant. Let's use 
it as the object of the verb "know", as 6.2.5 says we can do:

'Iv HoH HoD 'e' vISov.

"I know who did the captain kill?"

This doesn't make much sense. You can see that, so you want to 
get rid of the question mark:

"I know who did the captain kill."

And while you are at it, you'd like to fudge the words around 
some:

"I know who the captain killed."

Now, if you REALLY didn't have to think about what that second 
sentence meant or what kind of sentence it was, why did you have 
to get rid of the question mark and move the words around. If we 
express this as a REAL Sentence As Object, the content would 
have to be somewhat different:

verengan HoH HoD 'e' vISov.

Now we take the first sentence as is:

The captain killed the Ferengi.

Now add the {'e' vISov} and without modification of the original 
sentence, we get:

I know that the captain killed the Ferengi.

I don't have to change the punctuation or rearrange the words. 
It just works. But your sentence DOESN'T just work. You have to 
fudge it some. The reason you have to fudge it some is that you 
ahve to convert the question "Who did the captain kill?" into 
the relative clause "who the captain killed" and while you are 
at it, you also need to drop the word "that".

Isn't this sinking in yet?

> Or, are those of you who arguing that a question does not seem correct as the
> object of an {'e'} referral claiming that a question is not a sentence?  

No. We are merely pointing out the obvious observation that a 
question doesn't make any sense as the object of another verb 
except perhaps as a direct quote or, if sufficiently mangled, as 
a relative clause expressed by the wrong grammar.

> Why
> must you think that a parallel sentence must exist for the sentence to
> qualify as a sentence?

I sincerely do not understand this question. What do you mean by 
"parallel sentence"?
 
> peHruS

charghwI'

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