tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue May 26 14:02:54 2009
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Re: nuq bach?
- From: Brent Kesler <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: nuq bach?
- Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 14:01:09 -0700
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On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:26 AM, Steven Boozer <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> One quibble... {'IvDaq bachchu' yaS} feels odd/hyper-correct, a bit like "(At) Whom did the officer
> shoot" does in 21st century American English. Grammatically correct, yet stilted.
Coming from the Midwest, I'm fine with this construction. "Who'd the
officer shoot at?" (Say it with a slight twang).
> nuqDaq bachchu' yaS?
> "Where did the officer shoot?"
> (i.e. where did the shooting occur?)
I think this sentence is ambiguous. It can mean "Where did the
shooting occur?" or "What did the officer shoot at?" It depends on
whether Klingons treat {nuqDaq} as meaning only a question word for
locations or as a composition of {nuq} + {Daq}. And {-Daq} itself is
ambiguous; it can motion towards a location or an action at a
location. It's a distinction English makes better than Klingon.
> nuq bachchu' yaS?
> What did the officer shoot?
> (i.e. what did the officer shoot at?)
If I heard this question, I'd probably answer something like {nISwI'}.
So if {nuq} can also mean "what target" in this case, we have another
ambiguous sentence.
It looks like if one sentence is decidable, the other must be
ambiguous. Languages do this sometimes [shrugs].
bI'reng
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