tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Dec 29 23:57:18 2001
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Re: QAO (was: I had an idea, I don't know how...)
- From: "Sean Healy" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: QAO (was: I had an idea, I don't know how...)
- Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2001 19:45:46 -0900
Well, I wasn't expecting another answer to this after so long.
>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.
That's a good point. I've never formally studied Spanish, but if the
orthography is anything like Porutugese, this indicates that these are, in
fact, two different words that are pronounced identically.
>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.
It was my understanding that {-bogh} was only the relative pronoun 'which',
and that other relative pronouns aren't discussed. As you say below, the
issue of whether a question word can act as a relative pronoun is still
open.
> >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?
Well, obviously none, as no other type 9 suffix goes on the main verb of a
sentence. But I didn't say it had to be the first verb. I just said that
they could appear in such sentence. In the absence of a specific rule
stating that type 9 suffixes cannot appear on the main verb of an SAO, I
think it's open to interpretation.
> >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.
By 'other' questions, I meant standalone questions. See below for my
response to your other point.
> >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.)
Perhaps he simply thought it should be intuitive that questions words can
act as relative pronouns.
> > 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.
Grammatically and linguistically, it's just a sentence. That's enough of a
reason for me not to dismiss the notion of QAO out of hand.
While it's true that semantically it functions differently, that's only
within the context of a conversation. As a standalone utterance, it's
simply a sentence. And since the issue at hand was grammaticality, I felt
it appropriate to consider it out of the context of other sentences (i.e.,
its use in a conversation).
I don't know if anyone else on this list has ever had to deal with X-bar
syntax (an interesting notion, but I never saw any practical use for it),
but in X-bar syntax, a question is parsed exactly as any other sentence. My
notions of grammaticality are heavily influenced by my studies in
linguistics; that may be where our difference in the interpretation of a
question as a sentence originates.
At the time I wrote this, the issue for me was simple: As Okrand hadn't
explicitly said it was grammatical, he also hadn't explicitly said it
wasn't, so it was open to the individual. With the info you provided above,
it seems that Okrand has nixed it, so it's gone.
While this leaves question-word-as-relative-pronoun open, it does leave us
with no way to have yes/no questions as an object. In English we can say,
"I don't know whether he went" (in fact, saying "I don't know did he go"
would seem wierd, although it's valid in other languages), but we have no
Klingon equivalent for 'whether'. Unless there's been some ruling on the
question of 'if' as 'whether', as in English we can say "I don't know if he
went", but in other languages you can't necessarily use the equivalent of
'if' in this manner. For example, in Finnish, the literal equivalent of "I
don't know if he went" means that in the case that he in fact went, then I
there's something don't know (exactly what I don't know is left
unspecified). Instead, you have to say "I don't know did he go". Does
anyone know whether {jaHchugh vISovbe'} follows the English ('if' as
'whether') or Finnish ('if' strictly for conditionals) usage?
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