tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 22 21:31:11 2001

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Re: Klingon WOTD: ghorgh (ques)

jatlh 'atlh'atlh:
>What about for relative clauses?  Would that be like,
>
>ghorgh Haw'pu' yaS 'e' DaSov'a'?
>Do you know when the officer fled?
>
>'atlh'atlh


Sentences that use the word /'e'/ are not relative clauses (relative clauses 
are verbal phrases that, "like adjectives, . . . describe nouns" --THE 
KLINGON DICTIONARY 6.2.3).  They are part of constructions known as 
"sentences as objects," described in TKD 6.2.5.  /'e'/ is a pronoun that 
stands in for the preceding sentence, and is used as the object of the next 
sentence.

What you've done above is a sentence-as-object construction.  However, 
you've inadvertently stumbled upon a very controversial topic: using a 
question as the object of a sentence-as-object construction.  This is 
commonly known as "question as object," and nearly everybody has an opinion.

The details are far too complex for me to go into right now (perhaps someone 
would care to summarize for 'atlh'atlh), but there are both syntactic and 
semantic reasons that it's disliked by some.

The conservative approach would be to rephrase your statement in a way that 
doesn't use a question as object.  In the case of "do you know?" questions, 
it's easy: typically, one isn't actually asking whether someone knows 
something; he's asking for the information.  Just as we are informed that 
Klingons wouldn't say /pa'vamDaq jIbIr/ ("I am cold in this room") when they 
could say /Qorwagh yISoQmoH/ ("Close the window!") (KLINGON FOR THE GALACTIC 
TRAVELER, p. 105), so too I think that Klingons wouldn't ask "Do you know 
when the officer fled?" when they could ask

ghorgh Haw' yaS?
When did the officer flee?

(As an aside, I see no reason to include an aspect suffix here: /ghorgh 
Haw'pu' yaS/ "When had the officer fled?" might have some contextual reason 
for being, but I don't have a reason to use it.  We're asking about when the 
officer fled, not when he had finished fleeing.  TKD itself tends to poorly 
translated with regard to aspect suffixes, and there's a backfitting story 
to explain this.)

If it really is important to asking about the knowing, I suppose you could 
say something like this:

Haw' yaS.  rep DaperlaH'a'?
The officer fled.  Can you specify the hour?

(Note also that /rep yIper/ "Specify the hour!" is a normal way for Klingons 
to ask the time.  It's typically used as a command.  Asking "Are you able to 
specify the time?" makes it clear that we're asking about one's knowledge, 
not for the time itself.)

This little construction would probably never really be used by anyone.

David
Stardate 1642.9

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