tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 22 07:50:14 2000

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Re: Question words

On 22 Feb 2000 13:55:38 -0000 "Mark E. Shoulson" 
<[email protected]> wrote:
> I don't mean to re-open this discussion, since there is NOTHING NEW to be
> added to it, but I've seen a point made and even agreed to, which is not
> the case.
> 
> Okrand HAS NOT SAID that question words cannot be used for indirect
> questions in Klingon.  That they cannot is NOT an accepted fact in Klingon.

The point is that you want to talk about "indirect 
questions", which Okrand has never addressed, so we have 
neither any basis for banning nor accepting such a beast. 
Meanwhile, the main argument here is whether or not you can 
use question words as relative pronouns, and for that there 
is clearly no justification. There simply are no relative 
pronouns in Klingon. Surely you accept that.

> Indeed, several noted Klingonists (me and Krankor, at least) accept that
> they CAN.  I just spoke to Okrand a few weeks ago and mentioned that people
> were again saying he'd forbidden it, and he said he definitely hadn't.  He
> said someone had asked him about it, and he gave his usual evasive
> answer... and then saw it quoted as saying they were forbidden.  I know
> we've been through this before, and we talked about what Okrand said and
> what he meant when it first came out (i.e. the news that he did not mean to
> forbid them is NOT new).  Don't propogate the error about what's known:
> Okrand is still deep in weasel-territory on this, giving himself room to
> back out.  So don't beat yourself up, Nick.

You and I each want damage control here. You don't want 
people to ban what you call "indirect questions" (even 
though Okrand has never mentioned such a beast, never 
explained such a beast and never actually accepted such a 
beast), while I want to avoid having beginners leap across 
this vague boundary between what you call an "indirect 
question" and what any grammarian would call the use of a 
question word as a relative pronoun.

The boundary between these two radically different 
grammatical constructions is vague at best and I think we 
do beginners no service to encourage them to misuse 
question words as relative pronouns by telling them that 
there is a grammatical construction extremely similar in 
appearance to, though the meaning is different from, a 
relative pronoun, which is called an "indirect question", 
and while it has never been justified, Okrand has 
definitely not banned it, so you should just go ahead and 
use question words as relative pronouns and call the 
construction an "indirect question" and nobody can argue 
with you because Okrand has not yet banned it.

Two things have to happen before I stop being outspoken 
about this construction being wrong:

1. Okrand has to explicitly say that "indirect questions" 
are valid in Klingon.

2. Okrand has to explain the difference between an indirect 
question and the use of a question word as a 
pseudo-relative pronoun.

I guess a third possibility is that I simply stop caring 
about the language.
 
> ~mark

charghwI'

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