[tlhIngan Hol] Order of {vaj} relative to the {chay'}

[Steven Boozer]

And like adverbials, they “occur at the beginning of the sentence”

(TKD 69):  Three other question words likewise occur at the beginning of the sentence.

The other two being {ghorgh} “when?” and {qatlh} “why?” – as SuStel mentions below.  Where exactly “at the beginning” is the topic of this thread.

--
Voragh


From: SuStel
On 7/9/2019 11:27 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
SuStel:
> chay' is a question word that acts as an adverbial.

Interesting. I hadn't thought of that. I thought {chay'} was only a question word.
Are there any other question words, which act as adverbials ?

When I say "acts as an adverbial," I don't mean that TKD tells us to treat those words as adverbials; I mean the words' meanings are adverbial in nature. chay' how? is asking the manner in which something is done. That's adverbial. qatlh why? is asking the reason something is done; that's adverbial. ghorgh when? is asking the time something is done; that's adverbial — although in Klingon maybe it's considered a time element.

Federation linguists classified chay', ghorgh, qatlh, nuq, nuqDaq, 'Iv, and 'ar as question words; Klingon linguists classify them with chuvmey, along with all the adverbials, conjunctions, exclamations, and so on. The classification of some words into question words shouldn't make you think they are completely separate from other classes of words, or that they all work the same way. Barring Okrandian intervention, the best we can do is observe the canon and formulate the rules they seem to follow.
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