tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 09 19:05:44 1997

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Re: plans



According to David Crowell <[email protected]>:
>"He knows who hit the child" _is_ an example of an indirect question.

Perhaps that's the grammar that applies in Esperanto.  But in English,
it's not an example of any kind of question.  In English, it's an example
of a relative pronoun being used as the object of a sentence and as the
subject of a relative clause.

In Klingon, too, it would be translated with a relative clause.
There is simply no excuse for introducing an interrogative idea here.
{'Iv} is a question word.  It doesn't belong in statements.  Period.

>Question: What does he know?
>Answer: (He knows) who hit the child.

But "who hit the child" isn't a question.  In fact, it isn't even a
sentence.  It's a clause that acts as a noun within a larger sentence.

Most of the rest of the note is concerned with distinguishing between
two different meanings of the verb "know", and is not relevant to the
debate over grammar.

>A few languages do use different verbs to distinguish difference.
>Indirect question
>the numbers are there to make the word-order in English:
>2not 1is (is read: "is not")
>Spanish example
>El humano sabe quien tom� el dinero.
>The human knows who took the money

Look again -- this isn't a question.  If it were, the word would have
been "qui�n" with an accent.  Without the accent, "quien" is a relative
pronoun.  Spanish *does* have different spellings for the interrogative
and relative pronouns.

>Relative clause
>El humano no conoce al que tom� el dinero.
>The human 2not 1is-familiar with-the(one) that took the money.

This is the *same grammar* as the other example, just with a different
verb.  The word "que" is a relative pronoun, distinct from "qu�", the
interrogative pronoun.

[I don't know German, so I can't speak on its take on "indirect questions",
but I suspect the same pattern applies and its interrogative pronouns are
superficially similar to but distinct in meaning from its relative pronouns.]

>> {nIHwI' qIHta'be' Human 'ach nIHwI' ngu'laH Human.}
>> Paris hasn't met the thief, but Paris can identify the thief.
>But maybe Paris has met the thief, perhaps not. He might have ordered
>some food from Nog, and a drink from Rom.

Huh?  I was trying to show how you can translate your "Paris doesn't know
the one who stole the money" idea without getting confused by the meanings
that {Sov} might imply.  Paris's not having met the thief was a given.

-- ghunchu'wI'




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