[85492] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Question problem
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Doq)
Wed May 20 07:47:10 2009
From: Doq <doq@embarqmail.com>
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
In-Reply-To: <4A121077.3060207@trimboli.name>
Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 07:44:57 -0400
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
We were told that question words take the place of the words that
answer them. {nuq} is treated grammatically like the noun it replaces.
The answer could be the same sentence with {nuq} replaced by the noun
that answers the question. I had thought that discussions similarly
took the "beginning" question words as adverbials.
My mistake, I guess.
Of course, that doesn't resolve why we should prefer to have the
adverbial or the question word first, except to mimic the English word
order preference.
Doq
On May 18, 2009, at 9:50 PM, David Trimboli wrote:
> Doq wrote:
>> I wanted to ask, "Why are you starting slowly?"
>>
>> Suddenly, I realized that I had one grammatical slot to put two words
>> in. I don't think we've been given any license to use two adverbials
>> with a single verb, since adverbials don't have conjunctions like
>> nouns and verbs do. Meanwhile, the question word for "why" is
>> grammatically treated as an adverbial, so I'm stuck.
>
> Is it? TKD 6.4 simply says the question words /nuqDaq/, /ghorgh/,
> /qatlh/, and /chay'/ occur "at the beginning of the sentence." It says
> nothing about them taking an "adverbial slot."
>
> In fact, we don't know anything about "adverbial slots." TKD 5.4
> simply
> says that most adverbials occur "at the beginning of a sentence."
> We've
> never SEEN two adverbials in a single sentence (not counting /neH/,
> which works differently), but that doesn't automatically deny us the
> possibility.
>
> Basic Klingon sentence structure seems to be very amorphous. I picture
> it this way:
>
> <header> <object> <verb> <subject>
>
> where <header> is a nebulous blob containing all the bits that aren't
> the object, the verb, or the subject. Timestamps tend to come first,
> adverbials tend to come before nouns, question words tend to come
> before
> everything else. Of those tendencies, I think only the one about
> timestamps is explicit (TKD p. 179); the others probably come about
> due
> to our native language instincts. Strictly speaking, according to the
> book, timestamps tend to come first, adverbials tend to come last, and
> everything else appears between the two.
>
> This general structure has, of course, many exceptions. This is not an
> all-inclusive formula.
>
> qatlh QIt bItaghlI'?
>
> (Notice the lowercase /q/ in /qatlh/!)
>
> --
> David Trimboli
> http://www.trimboli.name/
>
>
>
