[tlhIngan Hol] Multiple question words / markers in a sentence

[Daniel Dadap]

> On Feb 18, 2019, at 07:10, Will Martin <willmartin2 at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> But when you combine the yes/no question with the question word question, you are just being grammatically weird and coming up with a story to explain it, apparently expecting the rest of us to approve of this and pretend that it’s a useful grammatical thing to know for the future as we make up future sentences.

I don’t believe anybody was asking for approval or claiming that this is a useful construction that people should go forth and use. I was just calling to attention a construction which at first glance seemed nonsensical, but when reanalyzed within the context of the conversation (I was an observer to the conversation itself when it occurred, so at first glance failed to grasp the context), does seem like a reasonable thing to have formed extemporaneously.

> You have encoded an indirect quote from English into a Klingon sentence. It’s not a translation. It’s encoding. Any English speaker might be able to figure out what you are saying, but would a Klingon understand it? I doubt it.


Just because something looks like encoded English doesn’t mean that it is. The prefix trick resembles indirect objects in English, and if one were to rely only on the grammar in TKD, one might balk at a sentence like “'etlhlIj HInob” and say that’s obviously just encoded English, and the right way to say it is “jIHvaD 'etlhlIj yInob.”  (It’s entirely possible that the prefix trick originated as accidentally encoded English, but that’s beside the point.) Nobody was translating anything in the conversation where “SaH'a' 'Iv” emerged; it was a conversation occurring in Klingon between Klingon speakers. It’s possible that the thought process that led to “SaH'a' 'Iv” might have been influenced by English, but it needn’t have been.

Would a Klingon say or understand something like “SaH'a' 'Iv” in response to something like “bISaH'a'”? Maybe. Maybe not. We don’t know. We can’t ask any Klingons to check. When Klaa asks “'entepray''a'?” as a question in Star Trek V, it doesn’t follow any known rules of grammar, and no rules to explain it have been revealed in the 30 or so years since then. Would an English speaker understand it? Certainly. Would a Klingon understand it? Presumably, since a Klingon spoke it. Should we feel free to use -'a' as an interrogative marker on a noun because Okrand did so one time three decades ago? I would think not, but I wouldn’t mind if other people do it, as long as they know they’re not following any known rules of grammar when they do so.

Our understanding of the language is far from complete, and constantly evolving. What’s going on in “waq vItuQ, DaS 'e' qa'”? You can’t use 'e' with a noun! Well, you still can’t, but in this case, you aren’t really doing that since it’s a fixed expression. “tugh puqwI' woch law' jIH woch rap.” Huh? You have to use law' and puS in a comparative; what’s the rap doing there?

We don’t know what we don’t know, which is why we ask each other questions like “does it make sense to use multiple question words or markers in the same sentence”. There aren’t any rules that say you can’t do so, AFAIK. Does that mean I’m going to start doing it just because no rule says I can’t? No. I’m aware that it’s weird. I think we’re all aware that it’s weird. Let’s not be afraid to explore the weirdness together.