[83957] in tlhIngan-Hol
Missing question words
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Doq)
Mon Jan 14 09:57:44 2008
From: Doq <doq@embarqmail.com>
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 09:55:20 -0500
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
It just hit me -- a eureka moment. Try to translate the following
questions:
"How far is it to the next city?"
"How cold is it outside?"
"How tall is Captain Krankor?"
"How high is that {cha'qu'} which flies overhead?"
"How deep is that {puch}?
The question words we have are {chay', nuq, 'Iv, nuqDaq, chorgh, 'ar,
'arlogh}. You can tell a lot about a culture's mindset by its question
words. Curiosity needs expression. What are a people curious about,
and what are they not curious about?
There is no {*'arHop*} to ask, "How far?" For the first question, you
could ask {veng veb vIghoSmeH 'ar qelI'qam vIghoSnIS?} The only way I
can think of to make it simpler is {Hop'a' veng veb?} I suspect that
is how it gets asked more often.
Same for "How cold is it outside?" {bIr'a' Hur muD?} Otherwise, we're
stuck with {Hur muD yIjuv! bIr'a'?} If you just said {Hur muD yIjuv!}
I wouldn't know if you wanted temperature, barometric pressure, oxygen
level or toxicity.
Same for "How tall is Captain Krankor?" {HoD Qanqor yIjuv! run'a'?}
Basically, there are only two question words that ask for any form of
measurement: {'ar} and {'arlogh}. The answer is a simple number, not a
unit of measurement, in most cases. All the other question words are
replaced by nouns or an adverbial.
That brings me back to the suggestion that, IF {'e'} CAN BE USED AS
TOPIC, then it makes sense to use it to talk about how far one
travels, because, given the Klingon apparent lack of curiosity
concerning measurement, why bother measuring the distance if that's
not the topic? Either it's the topic, or you wouldn't bother
mentioning it.
This would allow us to say things like:
wa'SaD qelI'qam'e' Hop juHwIj.
I can't think of another way of saying "My home is a thousand qelI'qam
from here." I certainly can't come up with a way to say it anywhere
nearly this concisely. According to the recently quoted interview on
deixis, {Hop} doesn't take a direct object.
Meanwhile, I'm still not sure (since we only have one canon example
using a comparative -- not common Klingon grammatical structure) that
this works. If it worked, it would be great.
Do others think it works?
Doq
