tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Mar 19 20:29:50 2000

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Re: KLBC: Hov Ha'DIbaH je lut (revision)

On Sun, 19 Mar 2000 19:02:59 EST [email protected] wrote:
> In a message dated 3/14/2000 5:36:19 PM Central Standard Time, 
> [email protected] writes:
> 
> << Unfortunately, Okrand has specifically said that one does 
>  NOT use a question as the object of the verb {SIv}. >>
> 
> 
> QAO vIlo'be' 'e' vInab je jIH. 'ach charghwI'vaD jIghelnIS:  ghorgh 
> QIjchu'pu' MO, jatlh:  <<mu'tlhegh Doch DalaHbe' ghellu'ghach.>>?  

During my one interview with Okrand in HolQeD he was very 
clearly cautious about how SIv should be used. He 
repeatedly said, "I just keep wondering about {SIv}." He 
was obviously both making a joke and also genuinely puzzled 
over how this particular verb should best be used.

Meanwhile, he had already given us an example of how it 
would be used, as I recently quoted here.

startrek.klingon newsgroup (July 1997):

"All four words asked about ({tul} 'hope', {Qub} 'think', 
{Sov} 'know', and {SIv} 'wonder') can be used in the 
construction {S 'e' V}, where S is a sentence, {'e'} is the 
pronoun ('that') which refers to a previous topic (in this 
case S), and V is one of the verbs listed above (as well as 
some others). If the sentence (S) is {tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh} 
'you speak Klingon', it's OK to say ... {tlhIngan Hol 
Dajatlh 'e' vISIv} 'I wonder if you speak Klingon'. (The 
fourth example is weird from an English translation point 
of view, but it falls right in line in Klingon. If the 
English translation matched the pattern of the other three 
sentences, it would be 'I wonder that you speak Klingon'. 
In English, this means something like 'I'm surprised that 
you speak Klingon' or 'I don't understand how it can be 
that you speak Klingon', but this is not what the Klingon 
sentence means. The Klingon sentence means something more 
like 'I am curious about whether you speak Klingon'. The 
clumsiness here is the English, not the Klingon.)"

So, whether or not anyone wants to argue in favor of an 
as-yet-unseen use of a question as object in general, 
Okrand has specifically told us not to use a question as 
the direct object of {SIv}.
 
> qep'a'Daq jang quvrIp jeSwI' Seqram, jatlh:  QAO has not been ruled out.

Seqram continues to argue in favor of what he wishes to 
call an "indirect question", which is a grammatical 
construction as yet unintroduced in canon or explained 
anywhere in Klingon grammar from Okrand. This would be a 
special kind of QAO and not simply an SAO that happens to 
use a question instead of a statement as the sentence 
represented by the prefix {'e'}.

Apparently, Seqram brought up this idea of an indirect 
question in a conversation with Okrand and got an 
uncommitted response, which encouraged him enough that he 
will hang on to this concept until we either have an 
example from Okrand or get him to specifically tell us it 
doesn't work, even though we have no justification for its 
use until we have such an example or explanation.

Meanwhile, this is all a long way from simply opening up 
SAO to casually include questions. We've been through this 
enough times that people should generally agree that until 
Okrand tells us otherwise, this issue is basically dead.
 
> Other conversations/posts have advocated not using QAO until we know for sure 
> from MO.

True.
 
> peHruS

charghwI'

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