[84543] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Klingon WOTD: ngIp (verb)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sangqar)
Tue Apr 29 22:38:41 2008
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:36:42 -0600
From: Sangqar <Sangqar@hotmail.com>
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
In-Reply-To: <BAY144-DAV40E669A3C8E0DD3984306B6D90@phx.gbl>
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Warning: Sorry for any misspellings. I am typing this in the dark since
my son won't fall asleep if the light is on.
> qatlh Dochvam vIrur 'e' DaQub?
When crafting the above sentence, I followed the general pattern of
question word-object-verb here, as in
qatlh Hiq Datlhutlh?
But now I'm not sure. It seems to me there are three possibilities:
qatlh SAO 'e' DaQub?
SAO qatlh 'e' DaQub?
SAO 'e' qatlh DaQub?
The first one seems the most natural, but I could make a case for the
second one, as well, since the first might be ambiguous. On the other
hand, if QAO is impossible, as most people on the list seem to agree,
the first could not be ambiguous. (The second sentence could still be
considered easier to parse, though.)
Since we know we can split SAO into two sentences, the second one could
be repunctuated to make it definitely correct:
SAO. qatlh 'e' DaQub?
The third one seems just plain wrong to me, since it puts the question
word after the object. But who knows what lurks in the mind of Okrand?
So is there a consensus on placement of question words in sentences with
SAO?
