tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Oct 28 06:00:31 1997
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Re: Questions as sentences
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: Questions as sentences
- Date: Tue, 28 Oct 97 08:41:21 EST
ja' peHruS:
>TKD 6.2.5 states: Klingon has two special pronouns, 'e' and net, which refer
>to the previous sentence as a whole.
>
>I, for one, consider a question as much a sentence as a statement is.
Certainly. The idea given as the subject of this note -- "Questions
as sentences" -- isn't in question. The issue instead is whether a
question-sentence can fill the object role in a "sentence as object"
construction.
> Therefore, I still claim that {nuqDaq yuch Dapol 'e' luSovbe' puqpu'vetlh}
>is a proper conjoining into one compound sentence.
Hold on there! First, {'e'} isn't a conjunction, it's a pronoun.
Second, this isn't a "compound sentence", it's a pair of sentences
with the first one referred to as the object of the second. That's
probably "just" a matter of semantics, but as we're talking grammar
here, I think semantics are rather important.
But to get to the argument itself -- I don't like using questions as
objects. It doesn't "feel" quite right; Klingon question words seem
to be intended for *asking questions*, not acting as relative pronouns
the way this tries to use them. Klingon doesn't even *have* relative
pronouns; it has the {-bogh} suffix for dealing with relative clauses.
-- ghunchu'wI'