tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 24 11:53:33 1997

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: indirect questions and relative clauses



-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

>Date: Sat, 8 Nov 1997 01:29:16 -0800 (PST)
>From: "David Trimboli" <[email protected]>
>
>[email protected] on behalf of David Crowell wrote:
>
>> > Question: What does the bartender not know?
>> Answer: Who took the money. (note the period, it is not a question, but
>> the answer to a question)
>
>"who" = "the identity of the person who"
>Relative clause inside a preposition
>
>The bartender does not know <something>.
>
><something> = "the identity of the person who took the money"
>
><something> = "the identity"  The rest is just a preposition, additional 
>information.
>
>The bartender does not know the identity.

Exactly.  The bartender does not know the identity.  The *identity*, *not*
the person.  This is why I say that it is not obvious that relative clauses
fill this gap.  They don't.  A relative clause would imply that the
bartender did not know the person.  He may or may not have known the
person, what we need is the person's *identity*!  QAO may not be _the_ way
to answer this, but I don't see that relative clauses necessarily are
either.

ghunchu'wI' says:

>I don't see any evidence that Klingon *has* indirect questions.  *Quotes*
>are direct, not indirect (the translation of "you told me you were hungry"
>is {choja' jIghung}, not ?{bIghung 'e' Daja'}, for example).  Klingons are
>supposed to be direct, right?  Straightforwardness!

Indeed, klingon may not have indirect questions handled as QAO as such.
But it still needs to handle the problem.  Now it is YOU who is guilty of
calling something something else and saying that therefore it isn't a
something.  No matter how you slice it, you need to deal with handling
indirect questions one way or another.  You may never have heard of them in
grammar school, but then you probably didn't learn about aspect or
phonology then either.

A few people answered my initial "the captain decides who goes" by pointing
out that "wuq" also means "decide upon".  Is that decide upon a person (how
do you decide upon a person?) or an action?  Isn't deciding upon a person
really choosing a person for an action?  Deciding that a person should
perform an unstated action?  So that's why I said it would be better with
"wIv".  But nobody really answered some of the other ones I asked about.
What about "The lieutenant suggests who should stay"?  "I have heard who
murdered the emperor"?  You can't possibly say "ta' chotbogh ghot'e'
vIQoy"!  I may never have heard the fellow in my life!  What I heard was
his identity.  The answer to the question "who murdered the Emperor."  If
Bob murdered  the Emperor, I can't say that I heard Bob: no sound that Bob
made has ever reached my ears in my life.  But I heard that he murdered the
Emperor.  So the thing that I heard IS a statement!  It's not "I heard the
person who murdered the Emperor."  It's "I heard that Bob murdered the
Emperor."  "ta' chotpu' *Bob* 'e' vIQoy"!  Note the "'e'" there,
*correctly* used.  The thing that I heard is really the whole statement,
which is why QAO may offer a solution.  Not the only possible one, mind
you, and not necessarily better than relative clauses, but there IS a
problem here that is NOT transparently solved by relative clauses.

Someone suggested "I see who is standing" and said that it should be
translated by a relative clause.  You bet it should.  No argument.  See how
you're not seeing the distinction between relative clauses and indirect
questions?  If Bob is standing, then 'I see Bob' makes perfect sense as a
restatement of that sentence... something which is NOT true of the sentence
above.

You keep pointing out that "I know who went" has the referent of the 'e' be
a single noun.  My point is that it isn't, not necessarily.  I *can't* say
"I heard (the person who murdered the Emperor)" if I don't know Bob.  I can
say "I heard that (Bob murdered the Emperor)"  The thing I really heard is
a STATEMENT, a whole clause, not a noun.  The noun is just the hinge-point
that I'm saying I can answer.

"I discovered what exploded."  If a bomb exploded and I discovered a bomb,
this is a simple relative clause.  If a bomb exploded and I didn't discover
one, but discovered THAT ONE DID, it's not the same thing.  I didn't
discover the thing that exploded.  I discovered its identity.

Here's a fun example in English that has two meanings: "I learned what you
taught the captain."  If you use a relative clause here, that means that
the thing you taught the captain, that's what I learned.  If you taught the
captain Vector Analysis, then you could give me a test in vector analysis
and I'd pass.  If you taught the captain poker, then I am claiming I
learned poker.  I don't make any claims about how secret the knowledge you
imparted to the captain was, I'm just claiming that I have learned the same
thing you taught to him.  As an indirect question, though, it's something
else entirely.  Now theimplication is that the information you gave to the
captain was not public knowledge, and I learned *what it was*.  If you
taught him vector analysis, I can't necessarily pass a test in vector
analysis... but I know that you taught him vector analysis.  That's what I
learned.  I learned the *identity* of the thing you taught him, not the
thing itself.

Does Klingon draw the distinction that English doesn't?  I don't know.  I
do know that the second meaning is not really a standard relative clause,
because the subject you taught is not the subject I learned, and I would
be... well, perhaps surprised if Klingon treated it the same.  Certainly I
wouldn't presume it with nothing else to go on.

Do you see the distinction now?  Indirect questions may, as ghunchu'wI'
says, have to be handled by removing all "question"-ness from them; I don't
know for certain.  But it is far from obvious that relative clauses are
necessarily the Right Thing either.  Maybe they DO use relative clauses.
Maybe QAO.  Maybe the question-ness is removed in another fashion, or left
intact in another fashion.  But I think it is not cut and dried that
relative clauses are the same thing.

~mark

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.4, an Emacs/PGP interface

iQB1AwUBNHnbJMppGeTJXWZ9AQHnagL/dA9N2hQWTLTtiM/BqFNVTGhRyq4V+lLP
izAByT3HtSMOw58cdYKNRICgCealVyvw5XWkx9xvRSqmGE+k71/oyY46XSe2n/rr
ivCwiSpHSXzwsDeKE13JTW6PcehvVcNj
=QJFd
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


Back to archive top level