I was thinking back to a previous argument about whether a
sentence-as-object construction can itself be considered a
"sentence" for when a rule in Klingon works on sentences. I went
through some old text by Okrand and found this message:
(1) You suggested translating "Do you think it's possible for a Klingon to feel love for a Ferengi?" as:
verenganvaD bang HotmeH tlhIngan qIt 'e' DaQub'a'?
The end of the sentence is fine. The correct way to say "Do you think that...?" is ... 'e' DaQub'a'? ('e' is "that," referring to something that precedes it in the sentence or in the discussion; DaQub'a' is "do you think it?").http://klingonska.org/canon/search/?file=1996-12-12b-news.txt&q=sentence
'e' DaQub'a' is here referred to by Okrand as "the end of the sentence," and 'e' refers to "something that precedes it in the sentence or in the discussion." We know 'e' refers to the previous "sentence" of the construction, so the "sentence" that Okrand is referring to must be the entire construction. Okrand later refers to the entire construction as a sentence again.
In another post, Okrand gave the sentence tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh 'e' vISIv I wonder if you speak Klingon. He goes on to say
In English, this means something like "I'm surprised that you speak Klingon" or "I don't understand how it can be that you speak Klingon," but this is not what the Klingon sentence means. The Klingon sentence means something more like "I am curious about whether you speak Klingon."
http://klingonska.org/canon/search/?file=1997-07-01-news.txt&q=sentence
Again, he has called the entire thing a sentence. He then refers to "such sentences": "One other verb that can be used in the V slot in such sentences is Hon 'doubt'" (the "V slot" is the second sentence). Then he goes whole hog and talks about sentences within sentences: "I'll return on another occasion to the question of whether the sentence preceding the 'e' in such sentences can be a question."
I haven't done a complete search, but I feel pretty confident
that we can think of SAOs as sentences. They are "complex
sentences," as named in the parent section of SAOs in TKD. Exactly
how complicated the second sub-sentence is supposed to be and the
exact placement of adverbials and dependent clauses might still be
imperfectly resolved, of course.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name