tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Sep 16 15:42:21 1997

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Re: Ha'DIbaHmey

ghay'cha'! jabbI'IDmeyvam yajlaH 'Iv? There are too many >>>> >>'s in this
debate! I have tried to clear it up for those trying to follow it. If I have
made a mistake, please correct it.

Qov-
{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."

SuStel-
Actually, your translation is not supported by canon.  {tlhIngan Ha'DIbaH
nuq} 
means "What is a Klingon animal?"

Qov-
Certainly, by itself as a sentence, it means that, in clipped Klingon.

SuStel-
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)

Qov-
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'

Qov-
But as surely as {tlhIngan Ha'DIbaH tlhuQ} means "a Klingon amimal's tail,"
{tlhIngan Ha'DIbaH nuq} means "a Klingon animal's what?"

SuStel-
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"?

Qermaq-
Excellent point. Just because question words tend to fall into positions
which mirror their 'replaced' counterparts doesn't mean that we can replace
any noun with nuq, or any name with 'Iv. 

Qov-
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.

SuStel-
Again, not really.  It says

v----------v
For {'Iv} "who?" and {nuq} "what?" the question word fits into the sentence
in 
the position that would be occupied by the answer.

yaS legh 'Iv
Who sees the officer?

'Iv legh yaS
Whom does the officer see?

In the first question, it is the subject which is being asked about, so {'Iv}

"who?" goes in the subject position, following the verb {legh} "he/she sees 
him/her."  In the second case, the object is being questioned, so the
question 
word goes in the object position, before the verb.

Similarly with {nuq} "what?"
^-----------^

This says nothing about replacing nouns, it talks about replacing subjects or

objects.  In Marc Okrand's forum post, it says nothing about replacing 
pronouns (or nouns), but rather of the question word working in a "parallel" 
fashion to the pronoun.

Finally, I don't believe there's a single piece of evidence to show that
{nuq} 
and {'Iv} can work in possessive constructions.
-END-

I hope that makes things simpler for those who can't read past >> >>. (Like
me!)
-'etlhlIj ghorchugh, ro'lIj yIlo'!-

batlh Qapla' je
Brent Kesler
bI'reng, qetlher puqloD
-reH Hol jatlhlu'chugh, not Hegh wo'.-

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