nachwIj 'oy'moH QIn ghomvam.. On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 11:08 AM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:
On 14 July 2016 at 14:00, DloraH <seruq@bellsouth.net> wrote:
On Thu, 2016-07-14 at 11:31 +0200, De'vID wrote:
Note the quotes around the word "question". If Okrand had really been asked straightforwardly whether a question (any sort of question) can be the object of a sentence, I'd have expected the report to say "You can not use a question as an object" without the quotes. To me, it reads like the questioner was confused about terminology and was using the word "question" (in quotes) to mean "sentences where question words are misused as relative pronouns".
No, those quotes were not from confusion about the word "question". In plain-text, there is only so much that one can do to express things. We can't bold, can't italicize, you can't see my face or hands. I used quotes to emphasis that I was talking about an actual question. Back then, there was much arguing on this list about QAO. At that convention I even started my question with "Much blood has been spilled..." I believe I even heard someone mutter "Uh-oh", and the look on some of the faces, I think they knew what was coming. MO said we cannot ask a question in a QAO. I think someone put out an example, and MO said he couldn't figure out what it would actually mean. And for the relative pronoun, at the time, MO wasn't sure if Klingon had that, or if it did, would they be the same words, the way English uses the same words for both.
I guess I'll just have to go back and try to understand what the controversy was from the archives. I can't imagine what would be controversial about a sentence like {nuq Datlhutlh DaneH}. OTOH, one can certainly construct QAO sentences which are meaningless, like *{HIq Datlhutlh'a' DaneH}, and which I can understand would be disallowed.
It's also fairly easy for an English speaker to misinterpret a QAO construction as a sentence with a relative pronoun, e.g., misinterpret {chay' DaHoH 'e' vISov} as "I know how you killed him". And perhaps attaching the {chay'} to {DaHoH} makes for something hard to understand, and it's easier to parse this sentence to mean "how do I know you killed him", which would be clearer as {DaHoH chay' 'e' vISov}. I can see a case here for banning {qatlh} and {chay'} from the first sentence of a SAO. But I can't see any reason why substituting a noun for {nuq} or {'Iv} in the first sentence of a SAO would cause any problems.
That is, I can see problems with some QAOs, but not all of them. It seems that the community wanted a binary answer (all or nothing) and got one.
Since the qep'a' is less than a week away, maybe y'all can shed more blood about this with Dr. Okrand.
The suggestion to recast, as I read it, applies only to sentences where an attempt is being made to use question words as relative pronouns.
The "recast" meant if you find yourself here, recast. For both questions and pronouns. We know about using [ngu']. "Which weapon do you want?" [nuH DaneHbogh yIngu'] The English is a question, but the Klingon is a command.
How would you recast a question like {'Iv wISuv 'e' ra' HoD}?
-- De'vID _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org