[tlhIngan Hol] Whether

[De'vID]

On Tue, Jun 11, 2024 at 1:20 AM SuStel via tlhIngan-Hol <
tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org> wrote:

> On 6/10/2024 5:19 PM, James Landau via tlhIngan-Hol wrote:
>
> I was reading the Klingon wiki's page on conjunctions today, and read
> about the seven (eight if you count *'a'* and *'ach* separately)
> conjunctions of Klingon, and how other conjunctions are expressed by
> suffixes.
>
>
> That got me wondering: How is the concept of "whether" expressed in
> Klingon? How would one say, for instance, "I don't know whether Mike stole
> my pie"?
>
> chabwIj nIHpu' Mike 'e' vISovbe'
> I don't know whether Mike stole my pie.
>

Doesn't this mean "I don't know *that* Mike stole my pie"? That is: Mike
stole my pie, but I don't (or didn't) know it. It's logically a bit weird
because the speaker surely knows about something that they're stating to be
a fact. But since Klingon doesn't have tense (and an aspect marker isn't
allowed on the second verb of a SAO construction), the speaker may well be
saying that they didn't know a fact in the past.

Consider that {qama'pu' DIHoH 'e' luSov} means "They know we kill
prisoners" according to TKD. Negating the second verb, I think {qama'pu'
DIHoH 'e' luSovbe'} should mean "They don't know we kill prisoners" (i.e.,
we do kill prisoners, but they don't know it), and not "They don't know
whether we kill prisoners" (i.e., we may or may not kill prisoners, and it
is not clear to them which is true).

> This is no more unusual than this canonical sentence:
>
> tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh 'e' vISIv
> I wonder if you speak Klingon.
>
I think it's different because the object of {SIv} is something the subject
is wondering about (and thus may or may not be true), whereas the object of
{Sov} is something that the subject knows (or doesn't know, in the case of
{Sovbe'}) and should be a fact.

Of course, you could have a situation where someone is bluffing, e.g., they
say {qama'pu' DIHoH 'e' luSovbe'} "They don't know that we kill prisoners"
when the speaker, in fact, does not kill prisoners but wants the listener
to think they do, and the sentence is technically true (but leads to wrong
assumptions on the listener's part).

-- 
De'vID
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