tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Dec 30 02:50:21 2001

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Re: QAO (was: I had an idea, I don't know how...)

From: "Sean Healy" <[email protected]>
> It was my understanding that {-bogh} was only the relative pronoun
'which',
> and that other relative pronouns aren't discussed.

/-bogh/ is not a relative pronoun.  Klingon does not have relative pronouns
as far as any information we have goes..  /-bogh/ has a function similar to
an English relative pronoun, and this is an important distinction to make.
If you insist on analyzing Klingon in terms of other languages instead of an
"Okrandian" context, you'll come up with a lot of unjustified rules.

> As you say below, the
> issue of whether a question word can act as a relative pronoun is still
> open.

Not a whole heck of a lot.  They're never described as relative pronouns and
they're never used as relative pronouns.  Why make them relative pronouns?

> 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.

Huh?  The SECOND verb of a Sentence As Object construction is the main verb.
The first verb is the object represented by the pronoun /'e'/.

> Perhaps he simply thought it should be intuitive that questions words can
> act as relative pronouns.

Or maybe he thought it should be intuitive that question words cannot act as
relative pronouns.  You can see where that sort of argument gets us.

The lack of any such usage by Okrand, and the lack of any such explanation,
would seem to tip the "there's no rule about it" situation in favor of
question words not being used as relative pronouns.

> 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).

Grammatically, according to all the rules we know, the following sentence is
allowed:

yaS HoH DujDaq.
In-the-ship kills the officer.

I dare you to point to a rule that explains why I can't put a Type 5 noun
suffix on the subject.

You can do some pretty ridiculous things when following the book exactly as
written.

> 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.

I don't recall that Okrand ever published anything on this.  I remember that
he once said he'd have to think about it, and never got back to us on it.  I
remember someone reporting that he'd spoken to Okrand about the topic while
at a convention, but there were conflicting reports on what the answer was.

> 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?

/jaHchugh vISovbe'/ might be /jaHchugh, ngoDvam vISovbe'/.

If you're not simply stating that you don't know, but actually want the
information, just ask:

jaH'a'?

Or you might approach it from another angle:

DaqDaj vISovbe'.
DaqDaj vI'ollaHbe'.

You might get wordy:

jaH 'e' vISovbe'; jaHbe' 'e' vISovbe'.

Or you might pull in more context:

mej 'e' vIleghbe'.

It's really not such a big deal not to have questions as objects or relative
pronouns.  Really.

"I don't know who you are."
qangu'laHbe'.

"I haven't discovered where he lives."
juHDaj vISamta'be'.

"I can't tell if he's strong."
HoS 'angbe'.  vInoHlaHbe'.

SuStel
Stardate 1996.8

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