tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Sep 15 13:49:22 1997
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Ha'DIbaHmey
- From: Qov <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Ha'DIbaHmey
- Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 13:49:15 -0700 (PDT)
At 09:06 PM 9/14/97 -0700, SuuStel wrote:
>[email protected] on behalf of Qov wrote:
>> At 08:51 PM 9/12/97 -0700, SuStel wrote:
>> >[email protected] on behalf of Qov wrote:
>> >> {nuq} doesn't mean "which." {tlhIngan Ha'DIbaH nuq} means "a Klingon
>> >> animal's what?" "the what of a Klingon animal?" We would rephrase your
>> >> question as a command "Identify the terran animal that resembles a wolf."
>> >
>> >Actually, your translation is not supported by canon. {tlhIngan Ha'DIbaH
>> >nuq}
>> >means "What is a Klingon animal?"
>>
>> Certainly, by itself as a sentence, it means that, in clipped Klingon.
>
>I don't think it's clipped. Okrand didn't say anything about it being
>clipped, he said (in a post to the MSN forum)
bIlugh. There was a point at which we believed that to be clipped before we
knew that nuq behaved like a pronoun in to be sentences. jIlIjpu'. Hagh
qoHpu' neH HeghtaHbvIS SuvwI'pu'
>> But as surely as {tlhIngan Ha'DIbaH tlhuQ} means "a Klingon amimal's tail,"
>> {tlhIngan Ha'DIbaH nuq} means "a Klingon animal's what?"
>
>Not really so surely. There's been a lot of debate on that point. Can
>question words be used in this way? Could you say {'Iv tlhIngan Ha'DIbaH} for
>"whose Klingon animal"? If so, shouldn't you also be able to say {SoH
>tlhIngan Ha'DIbaH} for "your Klingon animal"?
I defend my statement based on TKD 6.4, which states, "for {'Iv} _who?_ and
{nuq} _what?_ the question word fits into the sentence in the position that
would be occupied by the answer."
I'll accept its debatability, based on its new pronoun-like status, but I
argue on the side of the debate that allows {nuq} in noun-noun compounds.
Qov ([email protected])
Beginners' Grammarian