tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 17 08:17:59 1997

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Questions as objects (was Re: plans)

ja' peHruS:
>We may be beginning to see the real difference in Klingon grammar.  {Huch
>nge'bogh ghot Sovbe' Human} follows the pattern set forth in TKD 6.2.3
>"Relative Clauses."  {Huch nge' 'Iv 'e' Sovbe' Human} (repharased for
>parallelism) follows the pattern set forth in TKD 6.2.5  "Sentences as
>Objects" (the section I have been explaining).

I do wish a text-only medium such as this could do justice to the
half-strangled, gurgling scream that I made when I read this note...

Yes, the patterns are distinct.  Yes, they follow different grammar. 
But what does the second one *mean*?  I know exactly what you and 
others *want* it to mean, but according to the description of Sentence
as Object in TKD 6.2.5, that's not how it works.

I'll give the two basic -- and devastating, in my opinion -- arguments
against trying to express this meaning using a question as the object 
of another sentence.  Again.  I'd appreciate seeing any further debate
focused on these two points, especially the second one.

You want to say "The human doesn't know who took away the chocolate." 
First of all, this idea is not a question, and indeed has no question 
in it anywhere; thus, a Klingon question word such as {'Iv} is not 
appropriate.  The addition non-interrogative meaning that "who" has in
English is not relevant; in Klingon, {'Iv} is used to ask questions.

I can accept the argument that it's a rhetorical question, though I 
myself don't agree that that's the case.  However, there's another,
more basic problem with trying to use a question as an object this 
way.  This is the big, important, totally blows-QAO-away problem:

When using a sentence as an object, the pronoun {'e'} or {net} refers 
to the first *sentence* as a unit; in the idea being considered here, 
the object of the second sentence is the unknown *person*.  Whether or
not you accept Question As Object in general, you ought to reject it 
in this case, because it doesn't carry the meaning you want it to.

What doesn't the human know?  The human doesn't know *who*.  If this 
were a really a Question As Object acting like the Sentence As Object
does, it would be something like "The human doesn't know (someone took
away the chocolate and I'm asking for the identity of that someone)."
But the idea behind it is "The human doesn't know (someone identified 
or specified by having taken away the chocolate)."  That idea isn't 
said in Klingon by asking a question; it's said by using a relative 
clause.

>Now, can you see the beauty of how Klingon grammar is different from English
>and Chinese grammar, which each have only one pronunciation for the pronouns
>which serve as questions and which also serve as relative pronouns.  Klingon
>has two distinct forms of sentences.  What we perceive in English to be only
>one pattern is in fact two patterns in Klingon.  They are not alike.  They do
>not mean exactly the same thing.  Still, both patterns are legal.

The patterns are legal by the rules we have.  There's no rule stating 
that a question cannot be used as an object of another sentence. 
There is also no rule telling us how to interpret such a construction 
except by considering the entire question to be the object, exactly as
in any other Sentence As Object -- but that interpretation fails to 
give the desired meaning in the examples given so far.

There's no rule stating that a type 9 verb suffix must not be used 
with an imperative prefix, either, but a "word" like {yIwovmo'} is 
nonsense.  It is perhaps "legal" grammar, but it carries no meaning.

>Do not confuse Questions as Objects with Relative Clauses; they fall under
>two different catgegories in TKD, Sections 6.2.5 and 6.2.3 respectively.

I also wish a text-only medium such as this could do justice to the 
clenched fists I must force open in order to type this response...

Those of us who are arguing that QAO doesn't work are not confusing 
the two categories.  We are pointing out that the underlying idea of 
the sentences being proposed falls naturally into the category of a 
Klingon relative clause.  Those who are arguing that it *does* work
are confusing English relative pronouns with English interrogatives.
If English didn't use the same word "who" both to ask a question and 
to act as the subject of a relative clause, I don't think anybody at 
all would ever consider trying to use the Klingon word {'Iv} in this 
way.

-- ghunchu'wI'

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