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

[Will Martin]

HIja’! Yes. Oui! Ja! Sí! (Fist nodding up and down in ASL, followed by dominant hand fist with index finger pointing forward plopping on top of left hand fist with index finger pointing forward, while nodding head).

If you wanted to do it with direct quotes, you probably could say any of the following:

<<bISaH’a’?>> bIjatlh. ‘Iv Daghel?

‘Iv Daghel? bIjatlh. <<bISaH’a’?>> 

bIjatlh. <<bISaH’a’?>> ‘Iv Daghel?

‘Iv Daghel? <<bISaH’a’?>> bIjatlh.

The important grammatical point is that these are three independently grammatical, whole sentences. There are no dependent clauses. No sentence is grammatically linked to any other sentence. There’s a sentence with {jatlh} adjacent to the direct quotation.

Slightly more controversially, you could probably say either of the following:

<<bISaH’a’?>> ‘Iv Daghel.

‘Iv Daghel <<bISaH’a’?>>

It comes down to whether or not {ghel} can be used as the verb of speech referring to the quotation. At one point, Okrand said that we could only be sure that {jatlh} was correct for this, and we know that {jatlh} is always acceptable for this, even for questions. I believe that later on, he loosened up a bit and gave a short list of other words that can be used in the {jatlh} role of direct quotations.

I’m sure that someone else remembers the details of this better than I do.

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.




> On Feb 18, 2019, at 12:37 PM, Jeffrey Clark <jmclark85 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
>> On Feb 18, 2019, at 12:27, Will Martin <willmartin2 at mac.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> If your concern is whether or not it is grammatical, then I’m unmoved in believing that it is not. If you have some other point to make besides whether or not it is grammatical, then we’d go back and forth less if you didn’t include any suggesting that it sort of kind of is almost grammatical, right?
> 
> So the grammatically correct response according to the rules of the language as currently revealed would have been {‘Iv Daghel?}?
> 
> Instead of:
> bISaH’a’
> SaH’a’ ‘Iv
> 
> Thus:
> bISaH’a’
> ‘Iv Daghel
> 
> —jevreH
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