tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Dec 29 10:36:11 2001
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Re: QAO (was: I had an idea, I don't know how...)
ja' "Sean Healy" <[email protected]>:
>>One of the objections to QAO is that the two sentences don't quite match
>>each other. An English speaker would not accept "I cannot explain 'why has
>>he stopped?'" I cannot explain the REASON he has stopped, not why has he
>>stopped? (Notice how that last sentence makes no sense?) As far as makes
>>sense to me, the object sentence cannot be a question.
>
>Apples and oranges. Klingon is not English, and there are natural languages
>where such a construction is perfectly valid.
>
>Finnish:
>Miksi hän on lakannut? En osaa selittää miksi hän on lakannut.
>
>Spanish:
>Porque el a parado? No puedo explicar porque el a parado.
I don't know Finnish, but I know Spanish well enough to object to this
example. The question word "Porqué" has an accent over the last letter.
The answer word "porque" does not. That makes a difference.
Klingon {qatlh} is documented only as a question word. That's why I don't
see it working in anything except a question.
>Admittedly, these examples don't have the quotes of your English example,
>but the ordinary sentence-as-object in Klingon doesn't either. And you can
>say: I cannot explain why he has stopped, where the only difference between
>the dependant clause and an independent question is the verb inversion. And
>in Klingon, the word order would be the same.
The English word "why" can function either as an interrogative or as a
relative pronoun. Klingon has no words defined as having the role of
relative pronouns. In their place, we have a verb suffix {-bogh} with what
appears to be a much more limited function.
>In yes/no sentences, {-'a'} is just a type 9 suffix. Sentences with other
>type 9 suffixes can appear in a sentence-as-object. What's shouldn't
>{-'a'}?
Pardon? What other type 9 verb suffixes fit on the first verb of a SAO
construction?
>In other questions, question words are simply substituting for
>other words. If you deny them, shouldn't you also deny any sentences that
>contain pronouns or {Dochvam} or other words that replace words in
>sentences?
What do you mean, in "other" questions? A proposed Question As Object is
not a question. In questions, the question words do two things. They
substitute for other words, *and* they turn a statement into a question.
>I'm not saying that question-as-object is valid. I'm also not saying that
>it's not. Only Okrand can answer that question.
As I recall, he *has* answered that question, saying that he doesn't see
questions as objects working. (He did leave open the issue of whether a
question word used in the first part of a sentence as object is actually
asking a question or if it's acting like a relative pronoun, but since
nothing else in his comments or in the published reference materials so
much as hints at that being a valid use, I don't believe it is justified.)
> What I'm saying is that
>this particular reason doesn't seem linguistically valid. A question is
>simply a sentence, and we know that {'e'} connects two sentences, so there's
>no reason to consider it ungrammatical ... although you don't have to use
>it, or even like it, if it doesn't feel right to you.
A question is a sentence WHICH ASKS A QUESTION. That's enough of a reason
for me to consider it ungrammatical as the first part of a statement.
-- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh