Although I prefer chay' bISov? myself, I remembered this bit of dialogue from ST6 (note Chang’s response): GROKH: qay'be'. Daq SovlaHbe'taH qIrq. Kirk cannot know the location of the peace conference. {It does not matter ... Kirk cannot know the location.} CHANG: DaSovbej'a'? bISuDrup'a'? Are you sure? Will you take that chance? {Are you sure [of that]?...Are you willing to take that chance?} Subtitles as they appeared in the movie. The {curly brackets} are from J.M. Dillard's novelization which may reflect an earlier version of Meyer and Flinn's screenplay used by the novelist in her adaptation. --Voragh From: tlhIngan-Hol [mailto:tlhingan-hol-bounces@lists.kli.org] On Behalf Of SuStel On 8/18/2017 8:56 AM, Lieven wrote: Am 18.08.2017 um 14:43 schrieb mayqel qunenoS: As soon as he finishes his speech/passage, another person wants to ask him "how do you know it (this fact) ? Would it be correct for him to say {chay' DaSov ?} And by the use of the prefix {Da-} the {Sov} having as an elided object the entire preceding speech/passage ? Good question. I have three answers to this, with grades of correctness. a) I would accept {chay' DaSov} with no objection, but I have no evidence this is correct. b) Taken the book, there is a way to refer to a previous sentence, maybe {chay' 'e' DaSov}, but this maybe wrong. c) To be on a very clean grammatical track, I would suggest to say what you even used in your question: {chay' ngoDvetlh DaSov?} "How do you know that fact?" I find myself preferring chay' bISov? -- SuStel http://trimboli.name