tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Nov 08 21:23:12 1997

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Re: Question-Relative Clause

don't send this to [email protected]

----------
> From: Marc Ruehlaender <[email protected]>
> To: Multiple recipients of list <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: Question-Relative Clause 
> Date: Friday, 7 November 1997 6:08
> 
> I can't keep quiet any longer...
> 
> for one thing, I would like to stress that there are two possibilities:
> 
> 1) I have an expression in Klingon and am looking for its English
equivalent
> 2) I have an expression in English and am looking for its Klingon
equivalent
> 
> these are DIFFERENT
> 
> seems to me that sometimes they are mixed up in the arguments
> 
> now, let me respond to Scott Murphy:
> 
> > 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
> 
> this is true; but nowhere in TKD do I find an explanation on how to
> interpret these constructs. If I interpret them similarly to 
> Statements-as-objects, they don't make sense (if you don't believe this
> read what e.g. charghwI' wrote about it recently!); If I interpret
> them as relative clauses, then what is the difference between them 
> and "real" Klingon relative clauses and why didn't the author use
> a verb+{-bogh} structure? (I come back to this when we look from the
> other direction)
> 
> > 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
> 
> this section deals with KLINGON sentences containing verb+{-bogh}
> and how to best translate them into English
> 
> > head noun."  The sentence "They don't know how this happened," does not
> 
> now, you're talking about how to translate an ENGLISH sentence 
> INTO KLINGON! again: this is DIFFERENT from the above!
> 
> > 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.
> > 
> 
> OK, the general subject, we're dealing with here is: two verbs that are
> somehow related to each other.
> 
> Klingon does this either with type 9 suffixes (-bogh, -DI', -pa', -meH,
> -mo', -chugh) or with the sentence-as-object construction
> 
> English does this in its own ways, which I cannot list, because I'm
> not a native speaker. However, I believe my native language, German,
> is similar enough that my arguments translate well...
> 
> according to my grammar, structures that correspond to the ones here
> discussed and referred to as "questions-as-object" fall into basically
> two categories:
> 
> 1) those that are equivalent to a relative clause
> 2) those that refer to one of several possibilities
> 
> obviously, in case 1) you should translate them using the one known
> mechanism to express relative clauses, because the back-translation 
> from Klingon to English is guaranteed to give at least an equivalent
> sentence
> 
> as for case 2), all the examples I have seen in my grammar ar of the
> type "sentence as subject", an even uglier beast (and you might argue
> that even there, the "real" subject is a noun and not the whole sentence)
> 
> example: "It is important, who will come."
> 
> obviously it is not the (unknown) person that is important, but
> which realization of several possibilities is going to be true
> 
> 
> SuStel provided this translation K->E:
> > >"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.
> 
> this is, of course, only a smoother rendering of the more literal
> 
> "He hit the officers. I saw that." or
> "I saw that he hit the officers."
> 
> The fact that English allows you to drop the WORD "that" doesn't
> mean you're dropping its FUNCTION.
> 
> > 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
> 
> Translated as a question followed by a sentence reffering to it, you get:
> 
> "How had this happened? They did not know that."
> 
> which shows me that the ordering SuStel gives is EXACTLY what is implied
> by the Klingon.
> 
> > 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.
> > 
> it does NOT say, however, that any such use makes sense
> 
> HomDoq

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