tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 26 19:33:08 1997
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Re: Statements and questions
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>Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 13:41:05 -0800 (PST)
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>
>Questions can be asked. Statements can be stated. You can't ask
>a statement. If you are asking it, then it is not a statement.
Regarding this argument and its relationship to QAO, what about indirect
questions used in questions?
"Whom did you see kill the captain?"
"Whom do you recommend should stay behind?"
(The second one is probably the more interesting one)
That would get around the objection that the question was being stated and
not asked, since after all, it IS being asked. Well, sorta.
Just to clarify indirect questions a bit more... An objection raised to QAO
is that the "'e'" is referring to a *noun*, a thing, and not the whole
clause, as "'e'" properly should. In a true indirect question case, this
is not so. If Bob murdered the Emperor, then the sentence "I heard who
murdered the Emperor" is not equivalent to the statement "I heard Bob" (as
it would if this were a simple relative clause). The thing I heard, the
object of the verb, is NOT a noun that's part of the subordinate clause.
It is the subordinate clause as a whole, with the "head noun" replaced with
something. The sentence is equivalent to "I heard that Bob murdered the
Emperor" (or if you like, "I heard that it was Bob who murdered the
Emperor"). So the subordinate clause really IS referred to in its
entirety, which would support the use of "'e'" somewhere along the line.
There are other considerations as well; I have said before that this does
not mean that QAO is the only possible answer. But it should not be
dismissed due to confusion with very similar relative-clause-style
sentences, whose semantics and deep structure is quite different.
~mark
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