[tlhIngan Hol] The book of our good captain

mayqel qunenoS mihkoun at gmail.com
Wed Jul 13 09:04:23 PDT 2016


lieven:
> ghorgh [bItlhutlh DaneH]
> (a question word in front of a SAO)
> and not
> [ghorgh bItlhutlh] DaneH
> (a Question as object)

and why don't we just write :

{bItlhutlh ghorgh DaneH}

thus avoiding the confusion ?

also I just noticed this contradiction on the following three
sentences, from the klingonska article:

> yan 'ISletlh muv 'Iv DaneH Qang. - Chancellor, who do you want for the
> Yan-Isleth?
> nuq vIjatlh DaneH. - What do you want me to say?
> Qang HoHta' 'Iv 'e' Dalegh. - Who did you see kill the Chancellor?

on the first and third sentence, the {'Iv} is placed before the {neH}
and {'e'} respectively. why on the second it is being placed at the
beginning of the sentence ?

mop Hurgh Dtlh

On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 6:54 PM, mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:
> I believe this settles the matter :
>
> http://klingonska.org/canon/2011-10-30-email.txt
>
> --- quote starts ---
>
> In an e-mail from 1998 ( http://klingonska.org/canon/search/?file=1998-05-28-
> email.txt&get=source ), DloraH decribed an exchange with Marc Okrand:
> <http://klingonska.org/canon/search/?file=1998-05-28-email.txt&get=source>
>
> "The first one I nailed him with was our lovely QAO. Uh-oh. You can not
> use a "question" as an object; but... it is not known yet if Klingon
> question words can act as one of those relative things, uh, relative
> pronoun is it? You guys know what I'm refering to. So basicly we didn't
> really get anywhere with this one yet. The safest thing for now would be
> to recast if possible."
>
> This seemed to rule the above alternative out, and there's since been
> no indication
> that one can use words like nuq and 'Iv as relative pronouns, and MO
> seems to prefer
> constructions involving -bogh and ngu' (such as <jar DamaSqu'bogh yIngu'>, <nuH
> DaneHbogh yIngu'> and <Daq DaDabbogh yIngu'>).
>
> However, there's been one other option up for consideration:
> Can you use a question as an object if the resulting two-sentence
> construction remains
> a question? For example, can we ask:
> yan 'ISletlh muv 'Iv DaneH Qang. - Chancellor, who do you want for the
> Yan-Isleth?
> nuq vIjatlh DaneH. - What do you want me to say?
> Qang HoHta' 'Iv 'e' Dalegh. - Who did you see kill the Chancellor?
>
> Well, with this new canonical sentence - nuq Datlhutlh DaneH - it
> appears that this
> ancient question has been answered:
> YES WE CAN!
>
> --- quote ends ---
>
> all these months I believed that all qao's are illegal. in dark of the
> above, I will be qao'ing as there's no tomorrow.
>
> dth qunnoq
>
> On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 6:08 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
>> On 7/13/2016 10:10 AM, De'vID wrote:
>>
>> Are you saying that any QAO *construction* is just ungrammatical? I
>> was under the impression that what was considered incorrect was
>> *misinterpreting* the question word in a QAO sentence as a relative
>> pronoun.
>>
>>
>> We got our first question-as-object sentence from Okrand in TalkNow!: nuq
>> Datlhutlh DaneH What do you want to drink? This supports the idea that you
>> can use the pronoun-like (not relative pronoun) question words nuq and 'Iv
>> in the place of the answer, just as TKD describes, even if it's in the first
>> sentence of a sentence-as-object construction.
>>
>>
>> Would anyone on this mailing list even blink if they heard a Klingon
>> ask {'Iv vIHoH DaneH}? Or misinterpret it as "you want who I kill"?
>>
>>
>> I would blink, because I'd be thinking, "Oh, it's a question-as-object
>> construction, but it's one of the okay ones."
>>
>>
>> I actually think {chay' veSDuj'a' vIghajlaH DaH 'e' boyajchoH} is a
>> perfectly grammatical Klingon sentence, just one that doesn't mean
>> what Krankor wrote it means.
>>
>>
>> If it's grammatical, I don't understand what it means.
>>
>>
>> In fact, I think Klingon can express certain questions more
>> economically and precisely than English.
>>
>> {chay' maSuv 'e' ra'} "how did he order us to fight? (i.e., he ordered
>> us to fight; what manner of fighting did he order us to do?)"
>>
>> This does *not* mean "he commanded how we fight" as a statement, and
>> it can be contrasted with:
>> {maSuv chay' 'e' ra'} "how did he order us to fight? (i.e., did he
>> talk to us in person, did he send a coded communique by subspace, did
>> he send us a message by courier, etc.?)"
>>
>>
>> Although they are not spelled out in TKD, based on the TalkNow! example I
>> would probably also accept sentences like:
>>
>> nuqDaq bItlhutlh DaneH
>> where do you want to drink?
>>
>> ghorgh bItlhutlh DaneH
>> when do you want to drink?
>>
>> HIq 'ar Datlhutlh DaneH
>> how many ales do you want to drink?
>>
>> chay' Datlhutlh DaneH
>> how do you want to drink?
>>
>> But, as you say, I wouldn't accept sentences in which the question word is
>> being used as a relative pronoun.
>>
>> --
>> SuStel
>> http://trimboli.name
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> tlhIngan-Hol at lists.kli.org
>> http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
>>



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