tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 11 15:18:12 2009

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: Fw: RE: Yet another newbie!

David Trimboli ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

Terrence Donnelly wrote:

> --- On Wed, 11/11/09, Steven Boozer <[email protected]> wrote:
>  > 
>  > TKD p.69:  For {'Iv} "who?" and {nuq} "what?" the
>  > question word fits in the position that would be
>  occupied by
>  > the answer.
>  
>  So "Who is he?" is {ghaH 'Iv}?

The examples and rules we have are inconclusive. It might be {ghaH 'Iv} 
or it might be {'Iv ghaH}.

>  Can they occupy other places in a sentence? eg:
>  
>  ?'Iv taj Daghaj? HoD taj vIghaj.

Also insufficient evidence. I don't see why not.

>  >   Dochvam nuq 
>  >   What is this? CK
>  > 
>  >   Sojvetlh 'oH nuq'e' 
>  >   What is that food? PK 
>  
>  Don't these contradict each other?

Not really. It may simply be a matter of asking, "Which pronoun is 
acting as a verb here?" Although {nuq} (and {'Iv}) is described in TKD 
as a "question word," it is also undoubtedly a pronoun (an interrogative 
pronoun), and as such seems to follow the rules for pronouns standing in 
for verbs. That is happening in the first example, but in the second 
{'oH} is the pronoun acting as a verb.

Any rules about pronouns and question words acting as verbs seem to be 
fairly vague in any case; the rules seem to change with each example. It 
may be that the rule is simply "throw around pronouns however you like," 
or there may be a whole set of rules governing their use that we have 
never been told. In any case, so long as any sentences you use are 
comprehensible, no one has much cause to proclaim it absolutely wrong.

-- 
SuStel
tlhIngan Hol MUSH
http://trimboli.name/mush

Back to archive top level