tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 30 20:25:49 1997

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Re: Question as object



ja' ~mark:
>..."The lieutenant learned what fueled the ship."  It's not "the
>captain learned the substance that fueled the ship".  If the substance is
>stale kevas, how do you learn kevas?  You learn the identity of the
>substance, which is not the same thing.
>
>Is there an answer to this that doesn't require QAO?  Maybe.  But it is NOT
>as simple as you are making it out to be: an ordinary relative clause
>doesn't cut it.

I'd never heard of indirect questions before this discussion, and until I
saw this example I wasn't convinced that they were inherent in an idea as
opposed to its expression in a particular language.  Now I find I have to
agree that "He learned what fueled the ship" doesn't work with a relative
clause if it's translated anything close to directly.

This example is unlike the ones that I've complained about.  The object of
the second sentence is *not* a simple noun identified by what looks like a
question word.  In this case, the object indeed is a complete sentence.
The whole construction still isn't a real question, but there is an implied
answer.  Its sort of "He learned [the answer to] 'what fueled the ship?'"

I'm still going to try to avoid using questions as objects.  They might
have their place, but it's a "fence-around-the-law" kind of thing.  If I
start sprinkling {ghItlh qonta' 'Iv 'e' lughoj} and the like through my
writings, it might give people the erroneous impression that I accept the
superficially similar {ghItlh qonta' 'Iv 'e' lughov} -- which I do not. :-P

-- ghunchu'wI'




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